Haymakers

Pushed the wrong button yesterday and erased the whole blog!

A haymaker is a wild swing used for a one punch knockout. The origin of the term comes from old time haymakers who swung a scythe in the same motion as the punch. Today's blog is about the "haymakers" faced by today's haymakers: poison ivy, nettles, and wasps.

At Sheep Pasture we try to balance our need for animal feed with the needs of various animals in the environment. If we hay too late, the nutritional value of the hay declines, but if we hay too early, ground nesting birds can lose their nests. As an earlier blog noted, turtles also cross our fields to find nesting spots and they have a hard time avoiding the blades of a mower. Just to make things more complicated, the bluebirds on our property like to hunt for insects in short grass so if we delay haying too long there is a possibility that second nestings could be negatively impacted. Finally, no matter when we hay, the many rodents in our fields suffer. Meadow voles are common in our fields and they and their young are often exposed by mowing offering a smorgasbord for hawks and foxes. To keep a year round population of these prey items, we leave reservoir areas unmowed around our biggest field.

Poison ivy makes things difficult for haymakers as they load the newly harvested bales into storage. Poison ivy causes it rash from an oil on the leaves. The rash appears four to forty-eight hours after exposure so you have sometime to limit or even prevent the damage. We use something called Tech-Nu which breaks up the oil and allows it to be washed away. You rub it on, let it sit for a minute or two, and then wash it off. It also works as a pretreatment for clothes. Tech-Nu is available at some garden centers and pharmacies. One should not use Tech-Nu within three days of using hydrocortisone ointments, another common treatment for poison ivy.

Before poison ivy appeared seemingly everywhere, nettles were the primary itch provoker in hay. Stinging nettle does its damage with hollow hairs that act like hypodermic needles to inject histamines and other chemicals that cause an immediate stinging sensation. Since the effect of the sting is immediate, Tech-Nu won't help. Rubbing on a hydrocortisone ointment helps take the sting out, but the most soothing folk remedy is the juice from crushed jewelweed.

Probably the most dangerous part of haying are wasps. Yellowjackets and their cousins the bald faced hornet make paper nest. Bald faced hornets make a ball nest in trees and woe to anyone who gets too close. These large wasps are extremely aggressive, attacking with little or no provocation anyone who closely approaches the nest. They will also pursue people for a substantial distance away from the nest. Each hornet can sting multiple times and has the most painful sting I have ever encountered.

Unlike bald faced hornets, yellowjackets most often make their paper nests underground. By the time July and August roll around, these nests can contain thousands of stinging insects. Vibrations in the ground can send these wasps into attack mode, but they are generally more peaceful the bald faced hornet. At Sheep Pasture, the dangerous time for yellow jackets is during baling. The tractor or baling machine hits the nest and the innocents in the hay wagon are the ones who suffer the wrath of the wasps. Louis Hain, our property manager, tells of the time when he looked back to see both people on the wagon jump off and run away as fast as they could to avoid what Louis said was an actual cloud of stinging insects.

Yellow jackets are well know visitors to picnics particularly in the late summer and early fall. This is because the adults normally feed on nectar and as flowers become less common, the insects are attracted to jams, jellies, and sweetened drinks. Yellow jackets hunt insects to feed their young and they are significant predators of many insect pests. Unlike other mud daubers and digger wasps who paralyze live prey to feed hatching eggs. Yellow jackets chew up the bugs before feeding them to their larva in the nest. The larva respond to this feeding by secreting a sweet juice that the adults drink.