22 September 05
Alfalfa It Is
They harvested the wheat field outside our house at the beginning of July, and since then they have gone over the barren field many times with the plow. Most recently they plowed it into 15-meter wide rows separated by dirt berms, and then a day or two later flood irrigated the rows. This evening our landlord told me there’d be alfalfa next year, which is what I had figured.
Alfalfa seems like a pretty easy crop to grow. The field right to the south of us has been planted in alfalfa all year. The procedure there is to mow the field and bale the hay, which takes a day, then irrigate the fields, and then several weeks later it has grown back and you have another crop. I’m sure the enterprise uses more than its fair share of water, though.
An alfalfa field in bloom smells very nice, as does the mown hay. The crop supports lots of butterflies: both the orange sulfurs (which are native and a big pest of the crop) and the painted ladies.
Previous: Rita Moves West Next: Winding Down
One summer I was working bucking hay for a rancher in Yelm, Washington. One day he lent his crew to another rancher who was getting in his alfalfa. I’ll never forget the shock of hooking a bale of alfalfa and pulling it up onto my knee. I’d been doing it with hay bales all summer. But a bale of alfalfa weighs about twice what a bale of hay weighs. I fell over with the bale on top of me, to the delight of my fellow-workers.
To this day I see those green bales and wince.