View from the North 40: It's a time of woe, not hay

Buying hay for my horses this year felt like a cross between the opening moments of the New York Stock exchange in a bull market and gift shopping on Black Friday — and just a skosh, or maybe even a smidge, like negotiating a nefarious black market deal.

Every hay-for-sale ad or online post, as if the starting bell was ringing in the opening of the stock exchange, sent a mad crush of humans into the fray. (For anyone born later than the movie “Trading Places,” the trading floor was like a mosh pit for money rather than music.) With our phones to our ears, arms waving and papers flying, buyers yelled for attention and gestured the numbers in the unique sign language of commodity dealer.

Hay. We were all dealing in hay.

I swear, one time I saw a flatbed trailer stacked with the best quality mediocre hay pull into a parking lot with a hay-for-sale sign tacked to the bales that, in any other year, would have singularly underwhelmed any respectable horse owner. It started a foot race toward the hay at a speed and level of desperate violence that hadn’t been seen since the heyday of Black Friday shopping sprees.

With elbows flinging cheap shots at the other buyers and quick-footed maneuvers to trip them up, hay seekers roiled like flood waters toward the hay seller, and at least one potential buyer dove ahead of the competition. Then the scuffles broke out with various cries of “I was here first” and “I need it most” and “I’ll pay you two times more than it’s worth” countered by “I’ll pay three!”

Enemies were made that dark but epic day.

Finally, the irrigation waters dried up, and the bulk of the bales were purchased and tucked away under lock and key. The desperate of us left, wanting for feed to keep our horses and cattle from starvation over winter, counted animals, counted bales on hand, did the calculations for tons needed — translating bale shape and content while factoring in winer weather-related variables.

We called each other on the sly, met in the dark unlit corners of parking lots, traded rumors of 10 large round bales here, a ton or maybe two of small bales there if you call this guy. Whispered about having a source for large square bales, trying to divine whether the large squares were the largest size, the medium or the smallest large square bales.

I and other livestock owners have piecemealed together a patchwork of feed from different sources ... hoping for enough moisture to make spring grasses grow, but not so much cold that it greatly increases the animals’ need for more feed. Though I have to admit I hate even writing that because the universe does like to make me eat my words.

I feel for the folks still searching for feed. I imagine the hay sales have deteriorated to something similar to clandestine drug deals with desperate buyers questioning everyone about hay until they attract attention of some agricultural ne’er-do-well, “Psst, yo. I heard you need a hay fix. I got some quality stuff on my trailer behind this building. No weeds.”

People who normally wouldn’t be in contact with a seller like this will, this year, being going: “Yeah, that sounds legit. Let me get my cash and I’ll meet you in the alley.”

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My horses are so spoiled they haven’t shown a rib in years. This might be they year at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.