The Day the Weather Won: Hay, Fire, and a Lesson in Farming

A New Hay Rake and Big Plans

In the summer of 2006, we lived in Iowa, and our farm was all in hay. One particular week in August, my wife was away finishing a veterinary externship, our kids were with my mom back in Indiana, and I had the whole place to myself. It meant time for me to do farm stuff after work without regular family responsibilities.

One of those decisions started with a newly acquired hay rake.

I had just bought a Vermeer 10-wheel rake, a major upgrade from our old 5-bar side delivery model. This thing was big time in comparison. I could take two windrows and merge them into one clean, efficient path. I was excited to put it to use, and the weather forecast looked perfect: sunshine, dry air, ideal conditions for third-cutting alfalfa.

The Forecast Looked Good… Until It Didn’t

I cut the hay and let it lay. Then, with all the pride of a guy moving up in the world, I hit the field with that shiny new-to-us rake and turned that field of alfalfa into beautifully shaped windrows. I stood there for a minute, hands on hips, admiring the progress. I had made the jump to be a “real” hay farmer.

But then I checked the forecast again.

Now, keep in mind, this was before smartphones. I had to walk back into the house, fire up the dial-up internet, and check the National Weather Service. And there it was: several straight days of rain in the updated forecast.

I was stunned. Disappointed. Mad. I’d trusted the forecast from earlier in the week, and now I was staring down a complete loss. But I had my typical farmer positivity; maybe the forecast would be wrong, and the hay wouldn’t get too much rain. Maybe, just maybe, we could still get the hay up in decent shape.

When Baleage Isn’t an Option

On our farm today, we would bale it wet and wrap it as baleage to make good feed even in the face of a challenging weather forecast. But back then, we small-squared everything, and it had to be dry. If not, you were flirting with spoilage and even fire risk in the hay barn.

As the first drops fell, I watched from the window as those perfect windrows turned soggy. The rain didn’t stop. For days, it poured like it did on Noah when he was safe in the ark. What was once a beautiful third cutting of alfalfa was now a black, moldy, mildewy mess.

A Field Full of Rotting Windrows

I walked the field when the rains stopped, hoping something might be salvageable. But it was useless. Even trying to mulch it down seemed like a waste of time. I asked a few friends for advice, but none offered a real solution we could implement. Yet I had to do something to preserve the new alfalfa sprout, desperate for sunshine to grow, struggling under the black mess of spoiling vegetation.

Then it hit me like a lightning bolt: I would light up the Iowa twilight with fire and burn away that mess of failure.

The Night I Set Fire to My Hayfield

It was a Friday evening. The windrows were dry again, brittle, rotten, and smothering out the new alfalfa underneath. I figured they would act like natural fire breaks. Even though it was August, we had just received a lot of rain. The ground was moist; the wildfire risk was low.

So I grabbed a propane torch and a tank from the barn and lit them up.

Now, if you’ve ever burned pastures in the Flint Hills of Kansas, you know the rush. There is a strange excitement that comes with setting fire to dry vegetation: that mix of nervous energy and awe at watching it run and seemingly come to life as it eats away at the dry fodder. I may have only been torching 25 acres of ruined windrows, but I felt it just the same. I was channeling my inner teenage pyromaniac as I put the torch to each windrow.

I started on the windward side of each row and let the flames carry. I had buckets of water and a couple of shovels in the back of our Ford Expedition in case it got away from me, but with damp oil and isolated rows, I was not too worried.

Sheriff Lights and One Man’s Bonfire

As the sun set and the fire glowed brighter, and the flames marched across the field in nicely spaced plumes, I started noticing headlights coming down our gravel road. In that part of rural Iowa, you noticed cars, especially after dar, especially when you lived on a stretch where the old homesteads had all disappeared long ago and you were one of three farmsteads within eyesight of our farm.

And then I saw the lights on the roof: someone had called the sheriff.

He drove by several times, had a look around, and apparently decided the fire wasn’t quite the emergency it must’ve sounded like over the radio.

After the sheriff left, I stood there leaning on my shovel handle, basking in the heat from the flames that lit up the Iowa evening – flames that poured the failure of that cutting of hay. A failure born from trusting a weather forecast and the excitement of a new piece of farm equipment.

The Lessons Burned Into My Memory

There are a couple of lessons from that whole experience.

One: Do not get so excited about new equipment that you look for an excuse to use it before checking every variable.

And two, the big one, is something that of us in agriculture should tattoo on our foreheads: Mother Nature is in charge.

We can plan. We can double-check forecasts. We can time everything just right. And sometimes, she still wins. It’s humbling, frustrating, and an unavoidable part of this life. It is a lesson I regularly relearn, and I am relearning again this spring, as we sit here preparing for another planting season in northeast Indiana, watching as rain passes across our area on the radar.

That day, the weather won. But I walked away with a better understanding of who’s really calling the shots-and with one heck of a story about how a hay rake, a torch, and a field-sized bonfire all collided on a Friday night in Iowa.