Chapter 5 - Independence Day (38-39)

A Chronicle of the Age of Consequences ___________________________________ 38

up' before the increasingly leaden sky began to drizzle. There was a calm, methodical urgency to the family’s work. The apparent patriarch of the family, wearing the standard Amish uniform (straw hat, plain shirt, suspenders, black pants, and a beard), stood in a red hay baler that was so old it looked like it belonged in a local history museum. It sounded old too - its single-stroke engine, whose job was to compress the loose hay into a square bale and bind it with string, sputtered and choked so noisily that I expected it to give up the ghost for good at any moment.

But it didn’t - which was a proper metaphor for the Amish themselves, I suppose.

The engine kept going, and so did the baler, pulled by a team of handsome black draft horses that I later learned were Percherons. Together they steadily spiraled toward the center of the field, the baler excreting - for that’s what it looked like - a tidy, green bale of hay every thirty seconds or so. Not far behind followed another team of horses, guided by a young Amish man - likely a son or son-in-law - who stood on a flatbed wagon. On the ground were three young women, in plain dresses and white bonnets, who loaded the wagon with the freshly minted bales. The work must have been pleasurable because I heard the sounds of talk and laughter from where I stood. When they filled the wagon, the youngsters drove it to a farm across the (very busy) road, returning a short while later to continue their rounds.

In less than an hour, both teams were done. The field had been completely emptied of hay, looking for all the world like a shorn sheep, bewildered, and turned back to pasture.

I was sort of bewildered too. That didn’t look so hard to do, I

Chapter 5 - Independence Day _________________________________________ 39

thought. But my mood changed to astonishment a short time later when I heard the sound of another engine fire up. This was not the sound of a coughing relic, however; it had the confident hum of serious machinery. Indeed, it belonged to a John Deere combine of some sort (I know as much about farm machinery as I do about draft horses). Within a minute or two it began sweeping across a neighboring hay field, of approximately the same size, chased, almost comically, by a tractor pulling a large bin on wheels. The combine sucked up the loose hay from the ground and then spit it - for that’s what it looked like - through a long pipe into the careening bin beside it.

And idling nearby, with their lights on and engines running, were three more tractors with bins, waiting patiently for their turn.

In about half the time it took the Amish family to bale and load their hay, the combine had finished its work. All four bins had been filled and the tractors dutifully dispatched someplace over the horizon with their green cargo. The combine, too, took off down the road for parts unknown.

And suddenly all was quiet.

What had just happened? Two fields of similar size had just been cleared of hay - one principally by horses, the other by horsepower. I wondered: how many gallons of precious diesel had the ancient, coughing red baler used in comparison to the purring combine and speedy tractors? The difference must have been huge. And where did all that industrially gathered hay go? How many miles down the road would it travel to its ultimate destination? I had no idea – but I knew exactly where the Amish