If a dairy farm can meet its own need for feed, and possibly sell some extra hay or corn, that goes a long way toward coping with stagnant milk prices and increasing costs. But getting good crops going, maintaining them, and harvesting them is an arduous enterprise. For visitors, harvesting can provide some of the most picturesque Vermont images. If the weather forecast calls for several cool, clear days, it will be easy to find mowers, tedders (which fluff up the hay for better drying), cutters, choppers (for either hay or corn), and transport wagons at work.
It's an athletic event, even with mechanization that has made the process more productive than in the days when farmers gathered to scythe a farm's hay, pile it in wagons, and load it into multistory barns. One year at Addison County Field Days, the organizers of the annual armwrestling competition couldn't pull it together, but the young bucks insisted that there be some sort of contest, even if it wasn't divided into weight classes. It came down to a bodybuilder from Bristol, who could bench press 330 pounds at the gym where he worked out, and a slender, sweet-faced stripling farmboy. In the final, the farmboy wore the bodybuilder down and took the top prize. Reporting on what had happened for a local newspaper, I asked him afterward what he had done to prepare. "Nothing," he said, then thought of something. "Well, I helped my father with the haying."