My mother's switchel

These hot, humid days remind me of haying season on my family's farm in central Maine when I was a child.

(I heard on t.v. this morning that Maine farmers have already begun haying, about two weeks ahead of schedule, because the weather has been cooperative. This contrasts sharply with last summer's haying season, which didn't get under way until the end of August, due to all the rain. And once the hay was harvested, it was of poor quality.)

I sometimes drove the tractor which hauled the hay bailer, or I drove the truck. My brothers would load bales of hay into the truck, we'd take the load back to the barn, and from there we'd lift bales onto the conveyor belt to be taken up into the haymow. It was hot, heavy, and dirty work. Hay chaff was especially difficult to tolerate as we tried to breathe in the hot haymow (hayloft). The bales were bound with wire or twine. Both were hard on the hands, so it was important to wear leather gloves, even on the hottest of days.

I remember being up in the haymow, helping to stack bales, when my mother came up the ladder to tell us the Quint boys had been killed in a car accident, along with the girlfriend of the older boy. I felt sick. The younger boy was my age. He was in junior high. How could someone that young, and that innocent, die? And die so violently. His mother gave me his ice skates a few months later, and I always felt sad when I wore them.

I remember the evening my brothers suggested we go get a load of hay bales still lying in the fields. They'd waited until the sun went down so it would be a little cooler to do such exhausting work. I must've been driving the truck that evening as my brothers filled it with bales. Suddenly the truck tipped slightly, due to the uneven terrain, and the entire load tumbled off the truck.

My brothers decided we'd best keep this little mishap to ourselves as we re-loaded the truck and headed to the hay barn.

I remember the time, years earlier, when I'd gone out into the hayfield to ride on the baler with my brothers. This was when a person sat on each side of the emerging bale and pulled a lever to operate whatever mechanism caused the bale to become tied with wire, and the wire to become cut. I climbed into my brother Eldon's lap. He didn't object. It was fun for me to "help" my big brothers with their hard work. Apparently my head got in the way between Eldon's hand and the lever, for he pulled it down hard...onto my head. He felt terrible, and I felt even worse. No serious harm was done, though.

Probably my favorite memory of haying season on my family's farm is of delivering switchel to the hay crew. My mother would mix up a batch in a half-gallon jug, hand my sister and me a stack of cups, and tell us to take a drink out to the "boys."

The recipe above for my mother's switchel is in her own handwriting. Beneath it, just barely visible, is my handwriting, which says, "Bertie, Oct. 1983." I obviously asked her for this recipe when we were visiting her, probably on her birthday. I'd never seen the recipe in writing before, because this recipe, like most of my mother's good recipes, was stored in her memory.

When my niece Cheryl's son recently asked for the family's switchel recipe, because he wanted to make a batch, I was pleased. It's nice to know this family tradition is being carried on.

I suppose switchel is a rather odd-sounding recipe for a thirst-quenching drink, but it does the trick. I googled "switchel" recently and found several similar recipes, many of them including molasses, which I don't recall my mother ever including. The uncooked rolled oats, however, she always included. I guess they were added to give the drink a little more substance. My parents came from New Brunswick, Canada, so I imagine the switchel recipe was handed down to her from my Haines grandparents, who were farmers as well.

I don't miss the extremely hard, hot work of summer haying, but to this day the fragrance of new-mown hay is something that can't be beat.