I love baling hay.

I love the smell of it when it’s freshly cut.  I love the smell of it when it’s being wrapped into bales.  I love the smell of it as I haul it down the road to the hay-yard.  I even love the smell of it when it is first stacked, awaiting its winter use.  Haying is fun for me, there’s no doubt about that.  However,  there is one thing about haying that can be a little less enjoyable.  The heat!

Of course to make hay you need that heat.  Those warm breezy mid-summer afternoons help to dry it for several days so it can be baled without spoiling.  Everyone has heard the phrase “Make hay while the sun shines.”  Actually I think it’s probably less of a saying and more of a rule.  Yeah, let’s call it a rule.  The first rule of making hay, lots of sunshine!

Now with all that sunshine, comes some pretty warm temperatures around home.  I’ve spent many days baling hay in an open station tractor with the sun glaring down, or in a cabbed tractor with no a/c and no working fan.  It can get awfully warm, dusty and sticky, baling hay.

As those hot days start coming one after the other, after the other my mind always wanders to the very same thing; water.

A lake, a river, a stream, a dugout, even a pool.  Always filled to the brim with nice, cool, refreshing, dust removing, life-giving water!   Once the thought of water enters my brain there is no getting rid of it.  I become fixated.  Normally that’s as far as it goes until I end the day.  I simply pass the hours day dreaming about swimming in some perfectly clear lake.  In reality at days end I wind up in a shower to rinse off all the dust.  But this year was going to be different!

I decided to put in a pool!

Nothing too fancy.  A small pool for sitting and visiting.  You know, sort of like a big hot-tub but without the ‘hot’.  I’ve been dreaming about it forever, but this year I was biting the bullet and installing my very own fresh water pool.  Something I can jump right into when the haying is done for the day.  I was so looking forward to it.

As it turned out, the actual installation of the pool was rather quick.  But filling it up?  That takes a bit of time.  I can’t tell you how long I waited, as I watched it fill with the garden hose I think I may have dozed off for a bit.  The good news is – it did fill and when it was finally up to overflowing I couldn’t wait.  I ran to the house to put on my trunks and in I jumped!

And holy smokes it was cold!!  I should point out that Seamus, my fellow ‘haymaker’, was first in the pool.  I was a distant second.   But we were equally frozen by the end of it!

If I could offer some advice to anyone making a similar pool, first, put a black tarp on it for a few days to the let sun warm the water a bit.  Second, install a swim-up bar.   As you can see, I put one in and it was one of the better pool ideas that day.  Finally, third, make sure the cows aren’t already using it.  They may not appreciate you in there if it’s in use.

What a great way to get that hay dust off and my water fixation out of the system.

I think a pool was one of my better haying ideas this year.  In fact it may become an annual thing!