Dad once told me that “if you’re hoping for a good wheat crop you’d best count on some cut hay getting wet.” We made it through a bountiful first cutting without so much as a drop of rain or even the distant roar of thunder. Which makes me a little weary for the 2016 wheat harvest. Nonetheless, it was great to get 1500 ton of hay cut, baled and stacked in less than 2 weeks. This year marked the first haying season I stacked bales behind someone other than “Uncle Doug.” Although Whobee did a fine job retrieving bales and keeping the old New Holland running, and although I’m sure Doug is enjoying his “retirement,” I couldn’t help but feel as though an era had ended. Suddenly our workforce has become so young ; ) I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, and likely neither of the aforementioned but rather a combination of both. Speaking of young and old, this year also marked the first year we hired “stingers” to retrieve some of the bales from fields. Watching the old New Holland roll through fields next to the shiny, booming stingers was almost comical, and most certainly a dichotomy. To me it represents our ranch perfectly… a little bit old, a little bit new, doing what it takes to get things done. We hope you all are busy replenishing your stack yards and if lucky, receive a bit of rain after doing so… or even while doing so.