We started this year's second haymaking in the first days of August. Usually we do it later, mid-month — but the summer was exceptionally dry, the grass grew fast, so we had to cut early.

“The summer was dry, so we cut early.”

From fifteen hectares we gathered around fifty-five bales of hay in all. That is enough for the whole winter for eighty goats plus two retired horses. Sometimes a little is left for cousins who keep horses of their own. Sometimes they buy more, when the winter is long.

Wheels of cheese ageing in the chamber, on wooden shelves — The ageing chamber, late September

Now the fields are shorn, low. Within a few weeks the first frost will come. The herd comes back from pasture earlier every day, because the days are growing shorter. It is the start of preparing for winter.

Haymaking is work for the whole family. The neighbour helps with his tractor; we help him in July on his field. That is how Masuria has worked for generations — an exchange of labour, not money.

In the ageing chamber, cheeses from June's milk are coming along in parallel. The ones from good hay will be the mainstay of the herd's feed from November. It all connects.