Did I know what went into making a bale of hay? Not at all. Did I care? No. I scattered it in the rabbit pens and slept well after a hard day’s work.

But then I married this Snyder County farm boy. And my sister, Leslie, married his brother, who farms along with his parents in a lovely little valley not far from the Susquehanna River. And even though she and I live on farms now, we’re still town girls, Leslie and I. We understand crosswalks and coal dust, not clover, alfalfa, and rye. But we’re learning, and one of the most backbreaking jobs we’ve learned is baling hay.

The first time I helped bale, I started at the bottom. I can't say I actually “baled” hay. That would mean driving the tractor, baler, and hay wagon, which would require things such as strength, knowledge, and courage, so I’m out. I’m not a sissy, but let's not be foolish about this, either.

No, I just helped unload the bales from the wagon onto the elevator, which is a sort of slanted conveyor belt that carries them up into the hay mow.

Leslie and I climbed onto the hay wagon. Her husband, Randall, his father, and two neighboring teenage boys climbed up into the hay mow. As we watched them climb, I saw a line of sweat running down the back of Randall’s T-shirt.

Have you ever baled hay? Once, when I was dating Keith, we saw a commercial with a shirtless, broad-shouldered guy hefting big bales. Keith scoffed. “Who’d bale hay without a shirt?”

It looked like a hot, sweaty job to me. I’d take my shirt off, too, if I were a well-muscled guy. “Do you know how itchy he’d be?” Keith asked. He waved a disgusted hand at Hollywood’s idea of farming, and I just figured he was overacting.

Well, Leslie and I climbed onto the hay wagon with our seven-year-old sons while the men climbed up into the hay mow, and the elevator clanked and hummed. The boys climbed to the top of the heap and kicked and pushed bales down to Leslie and me, and we lugged those heavy — I’d say one, two hundred pounds, easy — bales of hay. Okay, Keith just said 25 pounds, but they felt like 200.

We hefted those mammoth, itchy blocks of weeds across the wagon floor and dropped them onto the elevator that took them up to the hay mow. If it doesn’t sound like hard work, you’re probably thinking of it like a movie director. The air was hot, muggy, and full of dust and grains. (Chaff, Keith just informed me, is the technical term.) Sweat dripped into my eyes and down my back. And you know something? Hay is dry, scratchy, and dusty. It gags your throat and sticks to your sweaty arms, neck, and face. If you weren’t wearing a shirt you’d start to look like a porcupine. So much for Hollywood.

It’s not a job to be taken lightly. The wagon floor is slippery with loose, dry hay. I know, because I fell flat on my behind. Bloop! “Are you all right?” Leslie cried. Then we both laughed as I scrambled to my feet before anyone else could see the town girl had fallen down on the job.

Half an hour later, dusty and sweaty, we sent the last bale clanking up the elevator. Randall and the guys climbed down from the hay mow, and I stared in amazement. You couldn’t see the line of sweat on Randall’s T-shirt anymore because the whole thing was dripping wet. So were his jeans, his hair, everything. He reminded me of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments when he saw the burning bush. He went into the cave a bearded, middle-aged man, and walked out an old man with a full white beard.

Now I have to tell you, yes, Leslie and I were sweating, too. Dripping! But we didn’t look like we’d stepped fully-clothed out of a sauna. Keith thinks I’m making too much of it, but he wasn’t there. What does he know about farming anyway?

Four wagon loads later we called it a day. “You town girls do good work,” our father-in-law said. If I could have lifted my arm I would have waved his praise aside. Instead, Leslie and I just replied humbly, “Oh, no problem,” as the men drove the wagons away, and the boys ran off to play.

And the town girls collapsed on the barn floor.

Now, I don’t mean to brag, but just a week later Randall asked Leslie and me — asked, mind you — to load the straw mow. It just goes to show, you work hard, put forth the effort, and someone’s going to notice and promote you.

Well, we may be town girls, but by golly, there we were again, scrambling over straw bales that would eventually be stacked to the roof in the mow. My old Shamokin farmer would have been proud of me.

“You know,” Leslie said, giving me a sidelong glance as we climbed higher into the mow, and the air became thinner and hotter, “they only ask the best to do this.”

I nodded, saving my energy for the job that lay ahead. Keith apparently thinks it’s important that I mention at this point that straw weighs less than hay, and we were stacking it in the side mow, which is not as high up as the main mow. And the reason we were asked to go into the straw mow was because the elevator doesn’t fit as easily in this end of the barn, and Randall and his dad would be strong enough to toss the bales up to those of us only slightly higher in the mow. (Maybe Keith would just like to write this story himself.)

Well, Randall and his dad tossed the straw bales up to us in the side straw mow, and Leslie and I, our sons, and one of the neighborhood guys stacked the bales. It was grueling work. I missed the occasional breeze you get standing on the wagon down in the fresh air. Dust and chaff clogged the still air high in the barn. It was like stacking bales in a giant oven...or like moving those big stones they used to build the pyramids of ancient Egypt.

I thought longingly of the cool water flowing in the Susquehanna River just a few miles away. Standing under the eaves of the barn it was easily 200 degrees. (Keith nearly choked from laughing at that. Maybe he’d like to make his own dinner tonight.)

Finally, the wagon was empty, and we stacked the last bale. The men drove off on the tractor for another load. The boys played with a kitten they’d found in the loft. And Leslie and I, sitting high above the barn floor, clinked our plastic water bottles together in a toast to the triumph of the town girls.