Stay in the haymow
The summer after 5th grade my dad made arrangements with a Beachy Amish farmer from our church, and I was hired to help him make hay that summer.
I was a chubby, soft, uninitiated pre- adolescent with not much practical experience in the world.
I was still a boy, but getting to be a bigger boy and it was time to learn to work.
The farmer took me up to the haymow and explained how the hay was going to come up the elevator and drop down into the haymow, where I would stack it. He would be down below, feeding the hay from the hay wagon onto the elevator.
I had to be careful because their wasn’t a lot of hay in the haymow yet, so the hay had a long way to fall from the top of the elevator to where I was stacking it.
If one of those bales came down on top of me, it could be the end of me.
He explained how he wanted the hay stacked, then he climbed out of the haymow, the elevator rumbled to life, and the hay bales started thundering down on me.
I remember this like it was yesterday.
The smell of the haymow, the hot, sticky, humid air.
The hay dust in the air.
The sunlight streaming in through the holes in the side of the barn, filtering through the dusty air.
The cats running and jumping around the beams and rafters.
Giant bales of hay started falling from the sky at a rate that completely overwhelmed me.
They landed with a thud, bouncing unpredictably in one direction or another.
Keeping an eye on the sky for falling bales, I wrapped my soft, pasty white fifth grade fingers around the baler twine and started to tug, yank, and lift those bales into position, doing my best to stack them like the farmer said.
I was in trouble from the get-go.
Way in over my head.
The pile of unstacked bales got bigger and more chaotic as more hay fell from the elevator. The bales came relentlessly and I was a soft and chubby little character dodging the falling bombs and struggling to lift a single bale into place.
Bales would bounce and roll off of the pile and knock me down as I tried my best to stack the occasional bale.
I was panicking and working as fast as I could, but no matter how much I struggled, the hay kept piling up higher and higher. I was ashamed and afraid of what the farmer would think of my pathetic performance.
I felt like a failure.
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After what seemed like an eternity, the elevator came to a stop and the hay bomb-bales stopped dropping. I was gasping and wheezing. I had hay in places I didn’t know I had. I’d been knocked down by hay bales, stepped into holes in the “floor” of stacked hay I was walking on, tripped over bouncing bales.
I was itchy, hot, and ashamed of my failure.
My heart was racing wildly. I was sure I was going to pass out at any time.
The farmer climbed up to the haymow to check on my progress.
He didn’t say much when he saw the mess (“good help is hard to find”, I guess he thought to himself).
He jumped in and started slinging bales, stacking them with precision, making it look effortless. I recovered slightly and tried to look busy, but I was dying inside.
After he had stacked all the errant bales, he climbed back down and the elevator rumbled to life again.
Hay bales started falling again.
I was overwhelmed quickly, once again.
That was just the first 30 minutes of the day.
This cycle repeated itself a few times, and we mercifully paused for a morning break.
The farmer’s wife served gallons of hot, semi-sweet meadow tea.
“If you drink cold water when you’re this hot, your body has to use energy to warm up the water. Better to drink something hot!”
That made sense to me, and the meadow tea was delicious, even if it felt weird to be gulping tea that was almost too hot to gulp while I was overheating.
The break from the action and the sugar from the tea helped me feel somewhat recovered, before it was time to ascend to the hellish haymow once again.
Still a few hours to go before noon.
After another brutal session of falling, wheezing, and dragging myself and a few hay bales around the haymow, I took a wrong step and my foot plunged down between the stacked bales I was walking on.
I tripped and fell as a bale came crashing into me. It bowled me over as my ankle remained stuck between the bales below me. I twisted my ankle as I fell.
It hurt, but it wasn’t a bad injury.
I got back up, pulled myself together, and started limping around the haymow with one new challenge to deal with.
As I flailed around up there, falling further and further behind, I was looking for any possible way to escape this hell.
My sore ankle presented an opportunity.
“I sprained my ankle up there.”
“I can’t keep going.”
The farmer called my dad, and my dad came and picked me up before lunchtime and took me home.
My first day of gainful employment ended with a whimper.
An exaggerated injury that I used to avoid the hell in the haymow.
I limped around home for a day or two before returning to the farm and facing my fears again.
Over the course of the summer I got stronger, and I learned how to stack hay, but that temptation to escape the tough times remained.
When I’m facing the hardest challenges of my life - I’m tempted to avoid them rather than be transformed by them.
I’m tempted to get out of the haymow when the heat gets too high.
Pursue comfort. Ease. Air conditioning.
Anything but the haymow.
But the haymow is where the magic happens.
Looking back, what I needed then was for someone to help me tape my ankle, slap me on the back, tell me to stop being a little bitch and send me back up to the haymow.
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What does it look like to get out of the haymow?
Never start the business.
Scroll on Instagram.
Eat. Smoke. Drink. Sleep. Anything to avoid the haymow.
Work on 23 other things that aren’t in the haymow.
Procrastinating on something I don’t want to do.
Avoiding difficult challenges in the first place.
Playing small and not going all-in on life.
Not saying what has to be said.
Not doing what has to be done.
Stay in the haymow.
Keep struggling.
Keep going.
The only way through it is through it.
We can lessen the suffering in the moment by escaping to food, pleasure, and comfort, but the work remains to be done.
If not by us, then by our children.
Face what you have to face, and stay in the haymow.
Do it wounded. Do it tired. Stop being a bitch.
Just do the work.
That’s what I’m doing now.
Hope you’ll join me.
The men of The Good King are practicing “staying in the haymow”. If you have been looking for a group of like-minded men to challenge and encourage you to face your fears, and support you as you do, come check out The Good King!
