Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and country skills that will help you beat
Speaker 1: the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part
Speaker 1: of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 2: The airways have to offer.
Speaker 1: All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop
Speaker 1: that tailgate.
Speaker 2: I think I got a thing or two to teach you.
Speaker 1: Hauling hay. The images that come to mind when someone
Speaker 1: mentions hauling hay they're pretty diverse from me. They go
Speaker 1: from downright angst and dread to fond memories of hot
Speaker 1: summer spent with good friends and relatives, and heartwarming instances
Speaker 1: of good times in nearly unbearable heat. I grew up
Speaker 1: hauling hay out of necessity and for summer work. I
Speaker 1: continue to work in the hay fields now, but only
Speaker 1: with the nostalgia of the mission, not the methods. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about, hey this week, how farming it
Speaker 1: has changed and its impact on the landscape. Impact. It's
Speaker 1: just cutting grass for animals to eat, ain't it? What
Speaker 1: impact could it?
Speaker 2: Have.
Speaker 1: Well, if we're talking about quail, and we are big ones.
Speaker 1: But first I'm gonna tell you a story. A square
Speaker 1: bale of hay, which should really be called a rectangle,
Speaker 1: can average anywhere from forty to seventy five pounds. It's
Speaker 1: held together with two strands of tightly tied haystring, and
Speaker 1: considering you're going to have to put your hands on
Speaker 1: it about six times before it's used, it may be
Speaker 1: the singular most labor intensive item on the farm. Now
Speaker 1: people say firewood will warm you four times when you
Speaker 1: got it, when you're splitting it, stacking it, and finally
Speaker 1: when you burn it. Well, old school square bales of
Speaker 1: hay in the summer had to be loaded onto a trailer,
Speaker 1: stacked on the trailer, unloaded at the barn, stacked at
Speaker 1: the barn, loaded from the barn to a truck, and
Speaker 1: unloaded wherever you were feeding cows that winter. Now, that
Speaker 1: makes about six times. You don't see many folks using
Speaker 1: square bells anymore, and that's one of the reasons. But
Speaker 1: in the early eighties they were still very much in vogue.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine and his parents had cattle, just
Speaker 1: like most of the folks where I grew up and
Speaker 1: they needed some help hauling hay. That summer was a
Speaker 1: bad one. It was beyond hot. It was stifling, take
Speaker 1: your breath away, crazy hot. But everybody knows that if
Speaker 1: your cows are going to eat in the winter, then
Speaker 1: there's work to be done in the summer. My friend's
Speaker 1: dad was paying twenty five cents a bail, which would
Speaker 1: be split amongst the field hands, and that was more
Speaker 1: than I'd ever made per bail, and an incentive enough
Speaker 1: for me to be there as the dew finished drying
Speaker 1: in the heat of the morning to get started. My cousin,
Speaker 1: whose dad was in the military, was stay in the
Speaker 1: summer with us, and he joined me that day. My friend,
Speaker 1: who still lived at home, wasn't getting a nickel of it,
Speaker 1: so the quarter prevailed would be divided by two. That's
Speaker 1: twelve and a half cents prevailed instead of eight cents.
Speaker 1: If we'd have had to split it three ways. We
Speaker 1: were going to be rich if we lived. My cousin
Speaker 1: probably wished he'd been in the military too, rather than
Speaker 1: walking alongside that hay trailer chunking bales of hey and
Speaker 1: that humid, blistering Arkansas sun that weighed a third of
Speaker 1: what he did. Welcome to the country, cousin, we're fixing
Speaker 1: to try and kill you. He did great, though, and
Speaker 1: he worked like he'd been doing it his whole life.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't remember how many bells we get hauled by
Speaker 1: noon when my friend's mama brought our dinner to us,
Speaker 1: but it was several loads. We gathered in the shade
Speaker 1: of a huge oak that had been there longer than
Speaker 1: there had been tractors or even a farm in that
Speaker 1: area to eat or dinner. The breeze was still hot,
Speaker 1: but it didn't feel like a hair dryer blowing on you.
Speaker 2: While we sat in the shade.
Speaker 1: We were eating baking and tomato sandwiches and washing them
Speaker 1: down with sweet tea that was so cold it would
Speaker 1: make your teeth feel like they were freezing out of
Speaker 1: your mouth when you took a drink. She brought two gallons,
Speaker 1: and the four of us drank it up pretty quick. Now,
Speaker 1: we had a five gallon keg of water with us too,
Speaker 1: but it was warm as dishwater, and it couldn't cool
Speaker 1: you energy as fast as that tea could. I don't
Speaker 1: think that I've ever had a glass of tea before
Speaker 1: or since that was as good as that first one was.
Speaker 1: That day, after about thirty minutes, my dad's friends said,
Speaker 1: well y'all about ready. We were not, But it wasn't
Speaker 1: as much a question as it was an announcement that
Speaker 1: work was fixing to start again, because that hey wasn't
Speaker 1: about to put itself in the barn. Now we've been
Speaker 1: taking turns of rotating, chunking bells on the trailer and stacking.
Speaker 1: It went clockwise. You had two rounds walking on the
Speaker 1: ground beside the trailer and one on the trailer stacking.
Speaker 1: You started out on the right side of the trailer
Speaker 1: for a load, then you went to the left side
Speaker 1: of the trailer for a load, and then on the
Speaker 1: trailer stacking for a load. Being on the trailer saved
Speaker 1: you from walking, but you had to handle every beil
Speaker 1: and you couldn't just stack square bells on top of
Speaker 1: one another like legos. You had to stack and where
Speaker 1: the innerlock, which helps keeping them from falling over as
Speaker 1: you move around the field into the barn. Only job
Speaker 1: that we didn't rotate out was driving the truck that
Speaker 1: pulled the trailer.
Speaker 2: That was his.
Speaker 1: Mama's gig and his daddy only got off the tractor
Speaker 1: bailing more hay long enough for her to go home
Speaker 1: and fix our dinner. Once we got them to the barn,
Speaker 1: they had to be stacked very carefully, ensuring that air
Speaker 1: could flow and removing any moisture that was left in
Speaker 1: the hay. Damp hay that's not finished curing in the
Speaker 1: field when it's bailed, gets rained on heavy dew, anything
Speaker 1: that keeps it from dry and cause it to generate
Speaker 1: heat when it's all mashed up together, tight in a
Speaker 1: barn and spontaneously combussed. A fancy way of saying catching fire.
Speaker 1: Always thought that term was kind of funny. Reminded me
Speaker 1: of the warning label I saw on a magnesium battery
Speaker 1: for an army backpack radio and a n p RC
Speaker 1: seventy seven U old vets will remember it. The warning
Speaker 1: label on that cardboard case that contained the replaceable battery said,
Speaker 1: do not submerge battery may vent violently. I always wondering
Speaker 1: why they didn't just say blow up. That'll boost your
Speaker 1: confidence crossing the river toting the radio and spare batteries,
Speaker 1: knowing that the parts that are all working together to
Speaker 1: keep your radio man from shooting out through the woods
Speaker 1: like a Roman candle was built on a government contract
Speaker 1: by the cheapest bidder. Anyway, the same goes for hay.
Speaker 1: Water is your enemy, and in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: In the hayfield, we had returned from the barn to
Speaker 1: the field for another load. We'd hauled a lot of hay,
Speaker 1: and the end was in sight, but knowing that it
Speaker 1: couldn't boost our energy, the sun and the heat had
Speaker 1: absolutely drained us. We'd all three given up wearing shirts
Speaker 1: not longer after we ate, and while only one of
Speaker 1: us got darker, my cousin and my friend were burnt
Speaker 1: and looked like a couple of bowl crawfish. We were
Speaker 1: about a third of the way into that load when
Speaker 1: we worked by a small farm pond in that pasture.
Speaker 1: I was on the trailer stacking and I saw my
Speaker 1: friend walk past a hey bell that I thought he
Speaker 1: was fixing the load. He just kept marching, never missing
Speaker 1: a step or breaking stride as he walked down that
Speaker 1: pond levee and into that water until his head disappeared
Speaker 1: beneath that stagnant algae colored fem that sealed back up
Speaker 1: when he went under, and it was like he had
Speaker 1: never been born other than a couple of tracks he
Speaker 1: made in the mud where he walked in the water.
Speaker 1: There was no trace of him.
Speaker 2: He was gone.
Speaker 1: I was fixing the holler for his mama to stop
Speaker 1: the truck, but she'd seen him literally walk off the
Speaker 1: deep end and was already getting out of the truck
Speaker 1: before I had a chance to say anything. She was
Speaker 1: halfway around the front of the truck before he popped
Speaker 1: up on the other side of the pond, doing the
Speaker 1: backstroke and smiling like he was swimming on a beach
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. Get out of that pond. His mama was
Speaker 1: hollering at him, and it made him nearly jerk a
Speaker 1: creak in his neck. It was like he had lost
Speaker 1: all sense of where he was, and her voice had
Speaker 1: brought him back into the stark reality of floating in
Speaker 1: a festering pool of contaminated water that was the only
Speaker 1: water warmer than what we had been drinking. Out of
Speaker 1: that joke, he walked backed up the pond bank, grabbed
Speaker 1: that bel of hay he'd passed earlier, and went back
Speaker 1: to chunking hay like nothing had happened. His wet blue
Speaker 1: jeans commenced to rubbing the insides of his legs. The
Speaker 1: longer he walked, the worse it got, and he still
Speaker 1: had to finish out that load and then walk another
Speaker 1: one before it was his turn to ride and stack. Now,
Speaker 1: my cousin I both tried to swap out with him,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't have it. He was halfway through his
Speaker 1: round on the left side of the trailer, walking like
Speaker 1: he was trying to stay straddle of an electric fence
Speaker 1: when he told his mama to stop the truck. It
Speaker 1: was his truck, and he'd ask her to hand him
Speaker 1: a necktie he'd taken off after church and stuck in
Speaker 1: the glovebox. Now we all thought that he'd had gotten
Speaker 1: to him again, so he had to ask her twice
Speaker 1: to hand it to him. She did, and he walked
Speaker 1: out of sight from her and dropped his wet breeches
Speaker 1: low enough to where my cousin and I could see
Speaker 1: how raw the inside of his legs were from walking
Speaker 1: in those wet blue jeans. His nether regions were as
Speaker 1: galled as anything I had ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: The hide was gone from everywhere, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how he was walking. I also didn't have any idea
Speaker 1: what he was fixing. To do with that necktie, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't about to turn away and miss it. He
Speaker 1: taken his pocket knife and cut his wet drawers off,
Speaker 1: and then took his Sunday necktie and fashioned himself an
Speaker 1: athletic supporter that defied human engineering. To this day, I
Speaker 1: have yet to see a more. We were thoroughly thought
Speaker 1: out and functional, fielled expedient answer to anything. When he finished,
Speaker 1: he buttoned his breeches back up, and we hauled two
Speaker 1: more trailer loads before we quit for the day. I
Speaker 1: know with every step he was in continuous burning pain,
Speaker 1: because he said, every step I take burns and hurts.
Speaker 1: He also knew he couldn't quit because there was no
Speaker 1: one to take his place. He didn't have anywhere to
Speaker 1: quit to anyway. That was his family's farm, and unlike
Speaker 1: me and my cousin, he was working for room and board.
Speaker 1: He also knew that he had to do something to
Speaker 1: be able to continue. We finished and was settling up
Speaker 1: with his dad when he came out of the barn
Speaker 1: without tie in his hand, working on loosening up a
Speaker 1: knot he'd tied in it. I said, why are you
Speaker 1: working on that? Not just throw it away? He looked
Speaker 1: at me like I was crazy. Throw it away. That's
Speaker 1: one of my good ties, and that's just how that happened.
Speaker 1: The advances in hauling hay in the past forty years
Speaker 1: have turned a multiple man operation into that of only
Speaker 1: a few and theoretically just one. I still work in
Speaker 1: the hay field helping my good friend Jacob Wood put
Speaker 1: up hay for his cow cafe operation. But instead of
Speaker 1: walking and chunking square bells on a trailer to be stacked,
Speaker 1: we do it all with a tractor and implements big
Speaker 1: round bails of all but taking the place of the
Speaker 1: square ones, and one round bell that we produce will
Speaker 1: average fifteen square bells. Also, you don't have to leave
Speaker 1: the air conditioned cab of the tractor until it's time
Speaker 1: to refuel or go home. Regardless of whether it's square
Speaker 1: bales or round bells. The order in bailing hay is this,
Speaker 1: You cut it, you let it cure in the field
Speaker 1: for up to three days, You rake it into rows,
Speaker 1: and then bail it up. One man with one tractor
Speaker 1: and three attachment pieces of equipment can do that. Now
Speaker 1: we'll have three tractors going when we're cutting hay. And
Speaker 1: halage is different from hay and that it's not allowed
Speaker 1: to cure. It's fresh cut green grass that soon after
Speaker 1: its cut, is baled and completely wrapped in plastic, preserving
Speaker 1: the moisture content while keeping it airtight. Halas that we
Speaker 1: bail up in June will be just as green and
Speaker 1: fresh as the day we bail that when we unwrap
Speaker 1: it and feed it in February, with virtually no loss
Speaker 1: of nutrients. Keeping the air out is key. If air
Speaker 1: is allowed to get in, it can mold. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool system. Once it's cut, there's a narrow window
Speaker 1: of moisture content that we have to get it bailed
Speaker 1: and wrapped. One tractors raking it into rows. The next
Speaker 1: tractor is coming behind it bailing it, and then the
Speaker 1: last one is picking up the round bells and completely
Speaker 1: wrapping them in that plastic. The halage has grown separate
Speaker 1: from the rest of what we culd. It's looked after,
Speaker 1: like it with soer beans. That's not just grass growing
Speaker 1: in the field. That's meat, loaf, steaks, and chili, among
Speaker 1: other places.
Speaker 2: We cut hay.
Speaker 1: On a portion of the White River Levee, nearly nine
Speaker 1: miles of green grass that cows turn into groceries. It
Speaker 1: makes an interesting ride with a sixteen degree angle in
Speaker 1: the cab of a tractor that's eight feet off the ground,
Speaker 1: stayed in a straight line while watching behind you to
Speaker 1: make sure the equipment is operating correctly while trying to
Speaker 1: stay upright in the seat. Man just a rough estimate
Speaker 1: in my head that comes out to about a pucker
Speaker 1: factor of ten out of ten. Cutting hay effects the
Speaker 1: landscape and the wildlife it lives there, and according to
Speaker 1: the US Department of Agriculture, Arkansas cuts over a million
Speaker 1: acres per year with fertilizer and regular rain, which usually
Speaker 1: never happens. Anything over three and a half round bails
Speaker 1: per acre is a good average. That's about thirty five
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of grass. The effects it has on wildlife
Speaker 1: can be immediate. I can't count the times that I've
Speaker 1: sat on a tractor cutting hay and washed hawks and
Speaker 1: coyoats have an absolute field day with rabbits and mice.
Speaker 1: Jacob told me that when he was a kid, he
Speaker 1: was sent to do some busch hogging along the edge
Speaker 1: of a creek on the back side of their farm. Now,
Speaker 1: my friend Isaac Neil who hails from Missouri would call
Speaker 1: that brush hogging, and there's no telling what it's called
Speaker 1: in the rest of the country. But regardless of the
Speaker 1: terminology or the number of ours found in the description,
Speaker 1: the end result is the same. We're cutting bushes and
Speaker 1: brushed with a tractor powered more stout enough to turn
Speaker 1: an inattentive armadilla into an abstract work of farm art. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Jacob said he was going about his business bush hogging
Speaker 1: and was coming around for his second cut when he
Speaker 1: started seeing those big old wood rats hopping around back
Speaker 1: and forth through that fresh cutting. He said, the tractor
Speaker 1: must have been like ringing the dinner bell, because all
Speaker 1: at once hawks came from every direction and.
Speaker 2: Were wrecking that rat population.
Speaker 1: He told me he looked forward to that first bush
Speaker 1: hogging of the season every year, and it was always
Speaker 1: the same. Unfortunately, the occasional wayvered battle possum isn't the
Speaker 1: only victim of modern hay farming or mowing. The first
Speaker 1: cutting of the season usually coincides with the arrival of
Speaker 1: whitetail fawns on the property, and knowing something about where
Speaker 1: they like to hide while mama's out doing her chores
Speaker 1: is essential in avoiding fawn tractor accidents that will one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the time be a worse outcome for
Speaker 1: the deer.
Speaker 2: Here's how we avoid it.
Speaker 1: Since those like to leave their fawns on field edges,
Speaker 1: we'll cut inside those edges a full width of the
Speaker 1: hay mower, watching for movement and looking for bedded fawns.
Speaker 1: Nine times out of ten they're gonna boat out the
Speaker 1: safety of the woods and we never see them anyway.
Speaker 1: The other time we're gonna see them and either go
Speaker 1: around them on the next pass or shoe them off
Speaker 1: into the woods if they don't lieve on their own. Now, Brent,
Speaker 1: don't you feel bad about ruining their hiding place. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I would if that was the only place
Speaker 1: to hide in the woods, but it ain't. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, cutting hay exposes and stirs up the insects,
Speaker 1: and just like raptors and coyotes will work on the mice,
Speaker 1: anything and everything that each bugs would be out having
Speaker 1: a picnic. Hen, turkeys with pots, salcoons with kittens, bats,
Speaker 1: you name it. They're all out there reaping the rewards.
Speaker 1: And don't forget the deer. They'll be out in strengthen
Speaker 1: a day or two to eat the tender regrowth of
Speaker 1: grass that was covered up before the hay got cut.
Speaker 1: It also allows them to be able to see other
Speaker 1: predators that would have been slipping around trying to make
Speaker 1: a meal out of them. Now down here where I
Speaker 1: grew up or up here, depending on where you're listening from.
Speaker 1: The Bob white quail was king. Quail hunting was something
Speaker 1: nearly every hunter did, and if they didn't have a
Speaker 1: good bird dog, they knew someone who did. I remember
Speaker 1: a portrait of a black and white setter that hung
Speaker 1: in our living room for the majority.
Speaker 2: Of my childhood.
Speaker 1: It was a Christmas gift from us to my dad,
Speaker 1: and he loved it like dad's do, even though he
Speaker 1: was a one hundred percent dyed in the wool pointer man.
Speaker 1: For you that don't know, the setters have long hair
Speaker 1: and pointers have short hair. Cockle birds and briars here
Speaker 1: would wreck a setter's coat in the native grass understory
Speaker 1: of where birds like to be. And while the setters
Speaker 1: were good dogs, the aggravation of common or are cutting
Speaker 1: birds and broken knotted links and briars and brown alot
Speaker 1: of dogs area it ain't fun for either one of us.
Speaker 1: It was a culmination of time and the changes in
Speaker 1: farmland utilization that sent the bob White quail into a
Speaker 1: downward spiral. Here in the southeast, in an area known
Speaker 1: as the fescue Belt that covers a large portion of
Speaker 1: the eastern half of the United States, the propagation of
Speaker 1: fescue type grass was beneficial to hay producers and detrimental
Speaker 1: to the ground nest in bob white. Fescue grows like
Speaker 1: sod in your yard. It grows evenly across the landscape.
Speaker 1: That produces more grass parakre, which is good. But if
Speaker 1: you picture in your mind your yard if it had
Speaker 1: a small bare runs that were almost void of grass
Speaker 1: that criss crossed over their property like a diagram of
Speaker 1: the veins in your body, well that's what the pastures
Speaker 1: look like when they just had native grass growing in them.
Speaker 1: The native grass grow in clumps, and they're separated by
Speaker 1: a few inches between each clump, leaving little avenues of
Speaker 1: travel for the quail to get around in. I know
Speaker 1: that don't sound like much, but considering a fresh hatched
Speaker 1: baby quail is about the size of your thumbnail. The
Speaker 1: difference in that gap being there or not is the
Speaker 1: difference between life and death. We're talking about a fragile
Speaker 1: creature that when they get up and start moving around,
Speaker 1: if they can't stay dry or avoid getting wet from
Speaker 1: the morning dew, they could get hypothermia and die. The
Speaker 1: native grasses also provided an overstory that hid the quail
Speaker 1: as they fed around and hit them from their predators.
Speaker 1: There's given take in farming. Thankfully, there are some folks
Speaker 1: who recognize these issues and are working hard to provide
Speaker 1: a suitable habitat solution for a resurgence of.
Speaker 2: Arkansas's quail population.
Speaker 1: Clint Johnson is a wildlife biologist and the quail program
Speaker 1: coordinator for the Arkansas Game.
Speaker 2: And Fish Commission.
Speaker 1: He says habitat and its diversity are the critical factors
Speaker 1: in the healthy regrowth of quail. When I ask him
Speaker 1: about fire ants and described to him how I'd seen
Speaker 1: a turkey nest get overrun by him one time as
Speaker 1: soon as the eggs started hatching, he slapped me in
Speaker 1: the face with the dead squirrel of reality and explained
Speaker 1: it to me like I was five, which is my.
Speaker 2: Preferred method of learning.
Speaker 1: Clint had me picture a bucket of water with the
Speaker 1: water being quail in the bottom of the bucket. Being
Speaker 1: habitat y'all with me, of course you are. I'm the
Speaker 1: only five year old here anyway. Now Here comes the
Speaker 1: fire ants, the wild hogs, nest predators, and every other
Speaker 1: possible bad actor in this scenario in the form of
Speaker 1: a drill bit poking holes in the side of the bucket.
Speaker 1: Clint said, we can tape up the holes and stop
Speaker 1: him from leaking, but when the bottom falls out of
Speaker 1: the bucket, it's game over. I get it. No habitat,
Speaker 1: no quail. He also told me if he had a
Speaker 1: large farm with catle on it, that he'd have fescue
Speaker 1: grass growing on it too. Diversity of habitat, that's the
Speaker 1: key if you want.
Speaker 2: Cows and quail now.
Speaker 1: I came along towards the end of the Arkansas Quail
Speaker 1: at least in Southeast Arkansas, and when it ended, man,
Speaker 1: it was like somebody walked out of the room and
Speaker 1: turned out the light. But before that happened, I remember
Speaker 1: going with my dad and a neighbor who had a
Speaker 1: good dog. I went with Tim, my older brother, and
Speaker 1: we always did pretty good. We'd be at the pond
Speaker 1: fishing in the spring of the year, and Tim would say,
Speaker 1: you hear that quail, He didn't whistle him up, And
Speaker 1: he taught me how to do it too. He just
Speaker 1: repeated the same sound you heard. The real quail was whistling,
Speaker 1: and every time he answered you, he'd get a little closer.
Speaker 1: They whistled to defend their territory and a tract to mate.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many times high witnessed Tim doing it,
Speaker 1: or myself after he taught me how to do it,
Speaker 1: but we'd be standing there and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the flutter of wings and you could see a Bob
Speaker 1: White come sailing in close to where we were standing,
Speaker 1: ready to duke it out over who was running that
Speaker 1: part of the farm. We're going to talk a lot
Speaker 1: more about quail when it gets closer to fall, when
Speaker 1: maybe we can see a break coming in this sweaty
Speaker 1: wool sock of the summer we find ourselves in. But
Speaker 1: I told Clinton Johnson that same story about how there
Speaker 1: were quail when I was younger, and then they seemed
Speaker 1: like they started going downhill pretty fast. He quoted a
Speaker 1: lot of reference material on how folks had been saying
Speaker 1: that starting after the Civil War pretty well coinciding with
Speaker 1: the advent of mechanized farm machinery, a steady decline over
Speaker 1: the past one hundred and sixty years ago. Well, I
Speaker 1: remember there being what I thought were a lot that
Speaker 1: gum how many were here in the heyday. Here's an
Speaker 1: example Clint shared with me. During the winter of eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Henry's Schoolcraft was kicking
Speaker 1: around in North Arkansas, seeing the sights, making friends with
Speaker 1: Native Americans, and living off the fat of the land.
Speaker 1: He wrote a journal and talked about there being so
Speaker 1: many quail crawling around that they didn't even shoot at
Speaker 1: him because there wasn't no sport in it. I think
Speaker 1: my conscience could stand a couple of days of that,
Speaker 1: seeing as how my favorite breakfast of all breakfasts is
Speaker 1: a fried quail, eggs, Tater's biscuits and gravy. Man, it
Speaker 1: don't get no better than that. I hope the quail
Speaker 1: come back. But old Clinton folks like him, they can't
Speaker 1: do it by themselves. It's like anything else, it takes
Speaker 1: a group of folks working toward a common goal to
Speaker 1: accomplish anything big. There's lots of good stuff in the
Speaker 1: Arkansas game and Fish Commission website about quail and how
Speaker 1: to manage habitat for him. It's free and it's available
Speaker 1: to everyone. No kidding, it's really really good. There's a
Speaker 1: whole team private land biologist at the Arkansas Game and
Speaker 1: Fish Commission that will come to your land and help
Speaker 1: draw up a plan to enhance the wildlife, hunting and
Speaker 1: viewing opportunities on your property.
Speaker 2: I bet where you live, either through the.
Speaker 1: County Extension Service or your state's Ring and Natural Resources
Speaker 1: that there's a similar group of people to help landowners too.
Speaker 1: They can't help it if you don't ask, and the
Speaker 1: squeaky wheel will always get the grease. Now, I definitely
Speaker 1: prefer the style of hay hauling I do now as
Speaker 1: compared to what it was like when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: But I have no doubt that there's a farm boy
Speaker 1: somewhere riding around and his daddy's tractor wishing he was
Speaker 1: somewhere else while listening to the satellite radio and controlling
Speaker 1: the temperature inside the tractor like he was sitting at home.
Speaker 1: It could always be worse, Junior. You could be out
Speaker 1: there hauling hay without a tie. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening I appreciate it. If you have the opportunity
Speaker 1: share this with someone that you think might like you.
Speaker 1: Folks be good to one another, and that's about as
Speaker 1: country as it gets.
Speaker 2: This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful The
Speaker 2: K