To me grass was an endless neighborhood competitive cycle of fertilizing, watering and mowing; the great American suburban nonsense. I participated weakly, not so much from the neighborhood’s expectations, but the wife’s. I’m not proud of it; coulda, shoulda taken a stand, but it does often make sense to “choose your battles.”

Unexpectedly, at age forty, I found myself a grass and alfalfa farmer, and everything became different. Doesn’t just about everything become a bit unexpected or different about that age? Yes, unexpectedly I found myself single and living in a cabin on a farm in Woody Creek, it seemed obvious that I must irrigate, cut and bale the grass thereon. While it was easy to calculate a sale price of 3 to 5 cents per pound, I had to learn the hard way the costs per pound in equipment, supplies and labor.

I learned that Woody Creek soils are fussy about grasses; orchard grass, brome, timothy and poa are favored. Ultimately I bought a book about grasses and became a dilettante about grasses and their importance, and hence my own importance as a player in the grass game. They are indeed an important plant family including wheat, rice, corn, barley and oats, staples in human cultures. My importance was measured by about 200 tons of hay sold to local cattle ranchers and horse people.

Grass farming is not without its dangers. I was riding my Massey-Ferguson spreading grass seed one afternoon across the road from Hunter’s Owl Farm. He was giving an interview to BBC on his porch, and my noisemaking was interfering. I could not hear his yelling, but I did hear the bark of his 12 gauge and the whistling of #6 shot over my head. When Hunter required attention he had his ways …