HAFLINGER TALES

I’ve discovered that watching horse behavior is one of the most rewarding parts of having them around.

As a case in point, a few nights ago I decided to put a new wood bench up in the far corner of the pasture. I thought it would be nice, of an evening, to sit under the overhanging pine branches and watch them munching the grass while the sun was setting on the other side of the farm.

The spot where I placed the bench is clearly visible from the back of the barn and the kitchen window, and most of the other vantage points around.  The one spot from which it cannot be seen is the front of their respective  stalls…from which they emerged gaily in the morning, only to stop in their tracks as they caught sight of my comfortable new place to sit down up under the trees.

It was definitely not a comfortable moment for the Haflingers.  There they stood, stock-still, side by side, staring up at my new bench like it was some kind of UFO that had landed during the night in our own little remote corner of the world.

This is where it got interesting.  True to their habitual first instincts, they held their ground, side by side, facing the strange new interloper, wide- eyed and snorting.  Then – perhaps sensing no movement from the object of their attention -Archie, ( the alpha horse)  made a little circle and came back to Wally.  Then Wally made a little dancing circle and returned to Archie’s side.  Ever so slowly, by this means they  advanced on the intruder.

But after a full 10 minutes of their circle dance, allowing for time spent chewing on the grass, they were still only half way to the new bench.  So thinking I could short-circuit the process and be able to witness the outcome before my planned departure for town,  I walked up to the bench and sat down for a few minutes.

Surely, I thought, this would ease their fears, and they would run right over to see if I had a treat for them.  Wrong of course. They continued to make their small circles,interrupted by grass chewing moments while keeping their eyes on both the bench and myself.

At this point I had to leave and lost track of the goings on.   I know they made it up to the bench eventually, because I noticed fresh chew marks on the new wood that evening when I went out to take a look.  And this time, when I sat down to try out my new seat, they ran right over as if we were all old friends and had co-existed forever.

So the Haflingers had to get acquainted with this new thing in their own careful and cautious way,  just as we owners sometimes have to let our human friends go forward in their own way, and in their own time,  as together we confront the hazards and uncertainties of life

Ed has been waiting for the rain to stop and the fields to dry. Ed cuts the hay in Harvey’s fields around the old farmhouse. He believes the total area is in excess of 50 acres, but it might be a little more, or a little less.

Harvey would know exactly of course, but he died suddenly of pancreatic cancer five years ago.  I remember the freshly piled snow around the parking lot, next to the funeral home on the evening of his wake. We had a lot of snow that winter,  and the parking area next to the large old house that is now the Dery funeral home hadn’t been plowed for awhile, so the snow had been pushed to the edges of the parking lot, and was piled nearly as high as the cars.

A freshly-plowed parking lot next to our funeral home is often a sign there has been a recent death in town.  In the old days, the bell rang in the Baptist church to mark each passing. Now–in winter–our signal to call a friend and ask which of our neighbors may have passed is a newly- cleaned parking lot at Dery’s.

Ed has been cutting Harvey’s fields for more than 30 years. He helped Harvey… and now does the same for Harvey’s family… with the farm work necessary to keep the land in agricultural restriction. Without the tax breaks from keeping the land agricultural, this lovely old farm with its high hills and meadows would have been prey to developers years ago.

When the rain stops, and the fields dry, Ed will be working long days. He told me he would have to forgo a job here Mason Hill because of the need to be haying as soon as he can get into the fields. Then other jobs will also have to be put on hold, and the various machines and equipment he fixes will sit in his garage waiting for the hay to be done.

We are still using last year’s hay, but yesterday I broke open a new bale from a section that was dry enough for Ed and his son Brian to cut and bale. They had filled a wagon, and pulled it in under a shed roof to keep it out of the weather.  Even with a fresh breeze blowing, you could smell the fragrance of newly- cut timothy and clover.

It won’t go to the horses yet. It is still too lush and green for them, and we all live in fear of the  potentially fatal colic which it might provoke, and the panic call to the vet -that will bring a big vet bill, but… if we are lucky… nothing more serious.

So Wally and Archie, the Haflinger horses, happily eat the dry hay from last year, and drink from their freshly scrubbed buckets filled with clean water, while we wait for the rain to stop and the fields to dry so Ed and Brian can fill the loft of the old barn with fresh, new bales.

Waiting for the rain to stop in order to cut the hay reminds me of a poem called “Obedience” by Sietze Buning, about his family in Iowa, where the Dutch Calvinist farmers had another reason not to go into the fields, even though work needed to be done.

Were my parents right or wrong
not to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morning
with the rainstorm threatening?

I reminded them that the Sabbath was made for man
and of the ox fallen in the pit.
Without an oats crop, I argued

the cattle would need to survive on town-bought oats
and then it wouldn’t pay to keep them.
Isn’t selling cattle at a loss like an ox in a pit?

My parents did not argue.
We went to church.
We sang the usual psalms louder than usual,
we and the others whose harvests were at stake…

Dominie made no concessions on sermon length:
Five Good Reasons for Infant Baptism,
though we heard little of it
For more floods came and more winds blew and we sang the closing psalm without the organ and in the dark:

“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”

Afterward we rode by our oats field,
flattened.

“We will still mow it,” Dad said.
“Ten bushels to the acre, maybe, what would have been fifty
if I had mowed right after milking
and if the whole family had shocked.
“We could have had it weatherproof before the storm.”

Late at dinner Dad said,
“God was testing us. I’m glad we went.”
“Those psalms never gave me such a lift as this morning,”
Mother said, “I wouldn’t have missed it.”
And even I thought, but did not say,
How guilty we would feel now if we had saved the harvest……………………………….

Fathers often fail to pass on to sons
their harvest customs
for harvesting grain or real estate or anything.
No matter, so long as fathers pass on to sons
another more important pattern
defined as absolutely as muddlers like us can manage: obedience.