Greetings, Hive community. Today I want to tell you a part of my experience living in the countryside, because currently due to the pandemic situation I am living in a rural area and my lifestyle has changed a little with respect to the lifestyle I had in the city, so I want to tell you a part of the experience focused on the collection of tall grass. I hope you like it.
At dawn, the sound of the birds makes a nice melody that I like to listen to, because almost always after waking up I wait patiently for 8 to 10 minutes on the bed while I listen to the songs and whistles coming from different birds outside the house. Doing this fills me with peace and serenity to start a new day with the best possible disposition.
When I get out of bed, I go brush my teeth, take a bath, put on some old clothes and then look for a long-sleeved shirt and a cap or hat. Whenever I go to work in the field, I prefer to wear old clothes, because there are plants that when you cut them they release a liquid that if it gets on your clothes, they get stained, so with old clothes this is not a problem.
The long-sleeved shirt is very useful, because when I wear a long-sleeved shirt, it allows me to stay a long time in the sun without being affected by it, because when I have exposed my skin to the sun for a long time without any protection, my skin burns, plus the heat is suffocating, which creates a lot of discomfort and this affects my performance at work. A recommendation I give you to avoid this situation, although it is quite obvious, always wear long shirts and long pants, so you can be under the sun as long as you want without it affecting you too much. I also usually wear a hat (the new clothing item) and a cap or a hat.
On the farm I have done different jobs typical of the place, and in this publication I have decided to talk about the collection of tall grass, the tall grass is used to feed the cows and also serves as food for other herbivorous animals such as horses.
And when talking about tall grass, you must take into account the fuzz, these are small hairs that some kinds of grass have, these hairs are hard enough to scrape the skin and get into it, something that is not at all pleasant for the person who is in charge of collecting the tall grass, who in this case is myself. The sensation of carrying a tall grass with fluff on your back is equivalent to shocking and scraping your skin with small needles, and the worst of all is that at the end you are left with that unpleasant sensation for a couple of hours... Believe me, if you ask someone to collect a tall grass with fluff, they will think twice before doing it.
An important thing to keep in mind with the fuzz issue is that the fuzz gets stronger and tougher as the tall grass grows, in other words, the fuzz gets more unbearable as time goes on. The importance of knowing this is that the grass should be cut before it reaches full maturity, so that whoever collects the grass will not encounter that unpleasant fuzz, but instead will find a less resistant fuzz that hardly buries itself in the skin.
Another important point about tall grass is that even though tall grass plants are planted very close together, there will almost always be a plant of another species growing in the middle of the grass, although these do not represent a problem, because in fact animals also eat these plants, so they can be harvested along with the tall grass. Something that I find curious about this matter is that the amount of plants other than tall grass in the tall grass crops are really scarce, this is because the tall grass plants are very close to each other, so these produce enough shade, so other plants of lower height can not get enough sunlight to grow.
As for the tall grass, there are different varieties, similar to how there are different breeds of dogs and with different characteristics, but in the end they are all dogs; it is for these reasons that in this farm only varieties of tall grass are grown that have little or no amount of fuzz, this way if help is needed at some point in the future, it is almost certain that people will agree to collect the grass without problems.
To collect tall grass, 3 tools are especially needed:
1. Machete
We will use the machete to cut the tall grass. The machete is a very used tool in rural areas, because it allows us to cut different types of plants to obtain resources or to eliminate the plants that invade our crops, with each machete cut the machete loses its edge, so it is necessary to constantly sharpen it, and this is something that the tall grass harvester must take into account, because if the machete is properly maintained, it can cut more easily, so we will need less force to make each cut, thus achieving that we end up less tired at the end of the work.
2. Rope
We will use the rope to hold the piles of tall grass that we have previously cut with the machete. The use of the rope to hold the piles of tall grass is really a very useful tool, when I use the rope to tie the piles of tall grass I can then focus only on loading the pile of tall grass, but when I do not use rope to tie the pile of tall grass, when I load it I have to make an effort so that the pile of tall grass does not fall apart at each step.
3. Tow
The cheesecloth is used to load the piles of tall grass more comfortably. The edges of the tall grass blades are "sharp", if you rub the edge of a blade of tall grass on your skin, you will notice how it can cut your skin superficially, for this reason it is important to use some kind of protection if we want to load the grass. This is where the cheesecloth comes into action, as it prevents the grass from hurting the skin that comes in contact with the grass. Also, since a simple tow is used, you can see that the blades of tall grass are not really that dangerous, you simply have to prevent them from coming into contact with the skin to avoid small wounds.
In addition, the tow has another purpose, it happens that the tow also serves to avoid the contact of the skin with the fluff, remember I mentioned the fluff of tall grass? Well, it happens that in spite of planting tall grass with little fluff, it is very important that if you are going to collect grass, the person who does it, must cover his skin and avoid rubbing it with the tall grass, because even though the tall grass that is planted in this farm contains little fluff, it is still unpleasant when it is buried in the skin.
Note: It is important to keep in mind that this is the personal method I use for this purpose, so others may do it differently.
Cutting the tall grass
Once you get to the place where there is tall grass, the first thing you should do is find a place where it is as clear as possible and extend the rope, it is important that it is a clear place because this way you can avoid that the tall grass you collect gets mixed with other plants or objects, if you do this you can avoid having to separate the tall grass from the unwanted plants or elements later.
The next step is to go very carefully to take the machete, take it out of the cover and you can start collecting the tall grass, I emphasize that you must be very careful with the machete, because it is a very sharp tool, so you can cut yourself easily if you handle it improperly, I recommend you always leave it in its cover if you are not using it, I have known people who leave it stuck in the ground, then fall and try to hold the machete and end up hurting their hands.
In fact I have cut myself by misusing the machete, although luckily they are superficial wounds that do not mean any problem beyond the pain produced by the cut, something that is a nuisance without a doubt... but I have learned from my mistakes and lately this does not happen to me anymore.
To cut the tall grass I recommend holding it with your hands, as this way you will be able to better manage the amount of grass you want to cut, as shown in the images.
You must also be very careful, as you are using your hand to hold the small pile of grass you are going to cut, so when you throw the machete you must make sure you are aiming well where you are aiming and thus avoid the chances of getting hurt.
Once the small pile of tall grass is cut, it is placed on top of the rope you left before, and then you repeat the process until you make a pile big enough to carry a good amount, but that you can still handle with your own strength. This is something you must not forget, in fact sometimes I make piles of tall grass too big and too heavy and I can't carry them with my own strength, so I have to decrease the pile, also, when sometimes the piles so heavy that carrying them loaded cause me to fall, something that is very dangerous, because if you fall you risk hurting yourself.
The next step is to tie the pile of tall grass with the rope, this step can be done in different ways, because there are many kinds of knots that can be done ... personally I prefer to use this method which I find very simple, the first thing you need is that at one end of the rope, there is a small hole (or ear, as we call it here) made with the same rope. This will save us time when doing this procedure, in this case, the ear is made from cooking the rope on itself. Likewise, there are many ways to make this ear, for example, this ear can be made by simply tying the rope over itself, without the need to bake it.
Well, the first thing to do is to pass the end of the rope that does not have an ear through the end of the rope that does have an ear.
Once this step is done, the rope should be pulled to tighten the pile of tall grass, I usually do this with my foot, as shown in the picture, using my foot helps this step to be done more comfortably, so I recommend doing it this way. Oh, and don't worry, the dirt on your rubber shoes or boots is not going to stop the animals from eating the grass afterwards, as these are adapted to eat the tall grass directly from the ground, although if your shoes are too dirty, with mud, for example, I recommend cleaning them before doing this step.
Then, what you do is to make an ear again, different from the one mentioned at the beginning, and pass this ear under the same rope.
This will form a new ear, (I find it funny that there are so many ears) it is through this last ear the space where you must pass the previous one.
And that's it! I'm glad I took several pictures, as I think by looking at them you can see the process of tying the tall grass better.
And we come to the final part, finally, you just have to load the tall grass, for this you have to place the tow on top of the pile of grass.
In the images you can notice that I use other clothes, this is because initially I didn't consider adding this part to the post so I took these pictures later.
Just like the way to tie the tall grass, to load it there are also many ways to do it, I will show you my favorite one. The first thing I do is to raise the pile of tall grass to my knee, in this part of the process I can realize how heavy the pile of tall grass is and if I should decrease the pile or if the weight is adequate to carry it, to analyze this I simply look at how heavy I feel to hold it on my leg, if I have to do a lot of force then I won't be able to carry it properly, so in that case what I do is to decrease the pile of tall grass.
Then, what I do is hold it like I'm giving the pile of tall grass a hug, that's when I can place it over my shoulder. In this last picture you can notice several things, like the use of the tow, by using the tow the way it is shown in the picture, I can avoid the possible cuts of the tall grass leaf on the skin of my neck, I am also avoiding to get in contact with the fluff that this tall grass has, so I can carry the tall grass comfortably.
In addition, you can see the work clothes I use in the field, plus a long-sleeved shirt to avoid the sun, another point in favor of using a long-sleeved shirt is that it prevents the grass from making contact with the skin of my arms when cutting or handling it, something that is recommended if you want to avoid possible lint or small cuts produced by the friction of the blades of grass.
At the end, you just have to transport the tall grass to your destination.
Resources used
DeepL translator and PIC.COLLAGE.
Thanks so much for reading!
Sincerely, @randomcoffee.