Hay, you!

Is this a painting by Jan Brueghel I? Pieter Bruegel?
Anyone know? I can't quite ID it.
All I know is the file name begins with "brue".

FarmWife had an extravaganza of hay-hauling last week. She hitched up the trailer and drove to the nearby field again and again and again, and now there is hay bursting out of every orifice of our feedroom, woodshed, and mule trailer. These are the scrumptious $1.50 bales that we had 60 of last year (as many as could fit, we thought) at a cost of 90 dollars*. This year, FarmWife thought the savings were too fine to pass up and so she committed to 115 bales without being quite sure where the extra 55 would go.

Never fear, Fenway is here! I promised FarmWife I would eat them as quickly as mulishly possible, hopefully allowing her to empty her trailer and woodshed (less water tight than the feedroom) before the next rainy period sets in.

I did, in fact, have an even better plan which FarmWife inexplicably vetoed. It was this: FarmWife hitches the trailer. She puts me, Fenway Bartholomule, inside. She unloads me, Fenway Bartholomule, into the grassy hay field alongside the 115 bales which she has purchased. She loads 30 of them into the trailer (for that's about all that will fit) and takes them home to the goats, leaving me, Fenway Bartholomule, to dine upon the remaining 85. I pass a pleasant few weeks in succulent repast, and when at last we meet again she finds her beautiful boy all the more shiny, all the more voluptuous, and all the more nourished.

"Uh, uh," she says. "You get a flake in the morning and a flake at night." On this plan, the hay should last half a year. The good news? This makes me, Fenway Bartholomule, one of the world's most affordable equines.

Ears,
Fen

* By the way, FarmWife loves her local hay farmer. Did you know that for this price—$1.50 per bale—he not only supplies her with good, clean grass hay but he also helps her to load it? He is one of the world's most mulish men.