twilightpony | First Cut Harvest Party

The timothy hay first cut harvest has begun! The cut grass is drying in the sun in several fields now and more is going to be harvested soon. By mid afternoon the mouth-watering scent of curing hay was wafting through my open windows. I was finding it hard to focus on my reading. I went down to the kitchen stores to see what I could pull out. I was rummaging through the pickled beets, crispy dried celery sticks and chopped corn stalk silage when I received a knock at the door. It was Pinkie dressed as a hay bale. She gave me an envelope, which promptly exploded in a cloud of confetti, leaving me with an invitation to a 'surprise hay harvest make way for the new harvest feast and party party' with only one hour to prepare myself and arrive at Sugarcube Corner. A feast was sounding really good by then.

It was just after closing so we had the first floor to us and the Cakes. Pinkie had gone all out with the harvest theme. There were long straw bale tables piled high with food, smaller straw bale tables with straw mound seats, harvesting equipment on the walls and paper lanterns hung up with baling twine. (I didn't know she had any left. She's getting extra mileage out of those lanterns. I guess she stashed a bunch more for "lantern emergencies".) Even with all the cooking and decorating she had found time to pick a few tasty bouquets of daisies, bladder campions, dandelion leaves, evening primrose and rough bedstraw.

The general idea was to eat the old hay to make room for the new hay. There was no way we were going to do that in one meal or even one day, but that was part of the joke. Still, Pinkie and the Cakes had pulled out all the stops in preparing and serving first cut hay in every way imaginable. It was all delicious. Now I'm stuffed. I think I ate too many hay fries, and crispy hay, and hay soup, and sweet and sour hay silage. And hay casserole. And hay juice smoothies. And hay cake. And ooooh, I'm going to go lay down for a while.