The sun inhales and exhales, trailing heated breath down the wide valleys of Nebraska Sandhills. I shade my eyes, waiting in the blistering sun for the tractors to make the turn around the meadow and slow to where I’m stopped.

I pull the thermoses from the pickup, setting them on the back end of the flatbed. A plains lubber “homesteader” grasshopper half hops and stumbles its grotesquely enormous body across the cut grass, while an avocet wades slowly in a waterhole near the edge of the meadow.

I’m moving slow as well; the thick heat gels the July afternoon. The hay crew arrives and topples sweaty from the tractors, happy to see the thermoses of ice-cold water, tea and lemonade I’ve brought for their break.  

When I first moved to the ranch over 20 years ago, there was a large hay crew in the summer. My husband and his two brothers worked in the hayfield, along with seasonal help, usually high school kids. His sister and dad often helped. With that many people, they were able to split up into a mowing crew and a stacking crew.

The mowing crew used sickle-bar mowers to lay down nine-foot swaths on the single bar and 18-foot swaths on the double. The stacking crew consisted of one or two straight rakes, a scatter rake, a sweep and a stacking tractor. The stacks were built freehand, without a slide or cage. 

My job in those early years of marriage was to keep the crew fed. Sweaty and tired, the group of men and kids would come to the house for lunch, ravenous and thirsty from the hayfield, and pile potatoes and meat on their plates and guzzle iced tea and water. In the late afternoons, I would take them thermoses of lemonade, water and Kool-Aid, along with cookies or bars. In fields of sweet prairie grass and buttery sunshine, we would find a patch of shade next to a tractor or haystack while the crew took a break. 

Over the years, family members moved off the ranch and it became more challenging to get help for the summer hay crew. We were forced to upgrade equipment that could handle putting up similar – if not more – amounts of hay with fewer people. Reluctantly, we switched over to baling.

As our equipment updated and changed, and our crews shrunk, I moved from the kitchen to the hayfield. I learned how to drive a tractor and run a rake – something I had never done before.

At first it was scary, driving this hulking machine around the meadow, trying to watch where I was going in front of me and what I was raking behind. I was terrified of running into the fence, power poles, water holes and marshes. Turning corners was especially unnerving; I geared down and lumbered along, lifting the rake so it didn’t drag and tried not to jack-knife the tractor and rake. 

As I became accustomed to raking, I discovered I enjoyed it. For one thing, birds and animals did not seem to mind my machine circling around in the meadow and would let me get quite close. From the cab I saw ground squirrels and vultures, deer and pronghorns, hawks and geese, and ducks and grouse. A pair of cattle egrets chased me around the meadow, gorging on crickets and bugs in the overturned hay. A robber fly caught a grasshopper and feasted on it while sitting on my tractor cab window. I watched, both horrified and fascinated as one bug sucked the life from the other. 

From the tractor cab, I watched and appreciated the wide Nebraska sky. I admired a pristine blue sky stretched endlessly in a great circle overhead. I observed lazy cotton clouds drift slowly and sleepy in the afternoon heat. I warily watched thick, tall clouds gathering gray and dark with threats of lightning, hail, or worse, chasing us out of the hayfield as they loomed closer and closer. 

Beyond all the wildlife and weather wonders, I took pride and satisfaction in raking. I enjoyed churning the flat, shimmering swaths of grass into neat windrows, sweeping the teeth of the rake over the mess of mowing to reveal a crisp, clean meadow underneath. I took more notice of the types of grasses and plants I raked – wheatgrass and brome and sandreed, three-cornered rushes and snake grass. Fuzzy foxtails, wiry clover and piles of tumbleweeds clogged my rake when thick. And oh, the glorious smell of all that prairie hay curing in the sun – the sweetest, most wonderful smell I’ve ever experienced.

This year, we are fortunate to have a sizable summer crew again, and I’ve returned to feeding a team of young men and women each day. Once more, I’m serving up piles of mashed potatoes and roast beef, steaming rolls and golden creamed corn. Cobblers, cakes and pies are often made for dessert, all washed down by icy glasses of water and tea.

And while I find satisfaction in this as well – and know my efforts are appreciated – I doubt they will keep me in the kitchen the entire summer.

One of these warm days, I’ll hang up my apron, grab my ball cap and gloves, head out to the hayfield, and rake sweet prairie sunshine into rows upon rows of hay.