A Hay Wagon For Us

Windy girl, Me (Deborah) and Wind Walker (right)

Paul and I share a lot of the same dreams, tractors, farms, horses (which turned into llamas), dogs and now we share a love for our cat Harley McFarley. Another thing we share in common is a desire for our very own hay wagon. I always wanted to hitch a big black draft horse or two to a wagon and take it around to each door and invite children on a hayride. When we moved here we sat on the corners of Main St. and ogled at the big teams of horses and their wagons and rigs. Like these in the pictures below.

 Diamond Z Ranch English Shire Horse Team

Sagebrush Fiber Artisians with their weaving
looms of fine harvested, shorn and spinned wool.

 The big wagon bug hit us and gave us a nudge. It was time to get a wagon of our own. The ads didn't turn up much. As we drove to and from our hiking spot and grocery shopping, Paul would look for wagons. He had his sensory antennae tuned into wagons lying still on the fields and farm yards. His ability to spot a wagon behind a barn or shed or side yard amazed me.  

He left notes on the gates in zip lock bags and tied them to the fence posts real good to keep them dry and steady. The notes read, "Want to sell your wagon?" Our phone number and name followed at the end of the note. We didn't hear a thing back. We continued to drive past fields and farms spying old forgotten wagons sinking into the earth, being gobbled by the tall winter grasses and sage. Some hardly recognizable, rotten and buckling under the weight of heavy farm equipment or loads of extra lumber intended for use someday.  

A treasure on every farm.

Beautiful treasures

Paul began to go knockin' on a few doors as I sat in the truck waiting for a clean get away. It would appear no one wanted to let go of their wagons for inheritance sake. Some people hang onto most everything around here and you can see those beautiful old rusted ford tractors and old sliver barns from yore leaning, stark grey against the blue skies in many places. Paul got pretty lucky one day. He began setting his sights on meeting up with workers opening up the gates at feeding time. Well anyway, that is how we met the farmer who sold us our beautiful girl, Gaia, our llama. That proved a good method and he met with a some that were willing to sell. They told Paul he could go look and even gave him other places to look.

Then one day last week Paul came across a wagon on KSL.com. He showed it too me one night. Simple old bones underneath and a brand new pine flat top. It was 8x16 long and came from a town up north called Lynndayle near Delta,UT. 

Yay we have a Hay Wagon Doug, his son and Aticus his working dog.

I am getting a little ahead of myself out of shear excitement about our wagon. Back to our drive up north to get the wagon.

Kollie watches as we get on an unfamiliar road.

We set out last Thursday March 22 to claim our prize. The drive was so lovely and it was the first time Paul had driven in that part of the country. Kollie who makes sure we are going the right way immediately cautioned us as we took an unfamiliar road.


We passed through the fort town of Deseret and past the Cricket Mountains then Delta and this one street town of Lynndayle. It was there we met Doug and his son and his to dogs one being Aticus and the other Bandit. They helped us load the wagon on the trailer. It was heavy!

The ride home was so wonderful as we stewed in our grateful juices and pointed at the scenic barns and mountains, horses and sheep, calves, barns and giggled at a sign with the name Duckworthy Dairy. We found a very nice place for lunch and everyone piled out and stretched. We sat under the wagon while we ate our Subway sandwiches and crunched on rice chips.

Lunch Time!

The whole process  from the beginning of the search to finding our family hay wagon was so much fun even though we did not know when the right wagon would come along on the Great Conveyor Belt of Life. We will be using the wagon in the parades here and neighboring counties, hauling hay and who knows, maybe we can get a hayride goin' by summer. Lot's to look forward to. Paul has already trimmed it to his liking and beveled the sharp corners of the framing underneath. And he just went to town and bought some stain Behr brand in the color of Sable, a nice sable brown. Which we are all painting on today.

 For now I am going to make breakfast then we will paint the wagon together. That wind is roarin' like a lion today ! How does it get any better than this?

Thanks for visiting and sharing in our joy. Come back and see how the wagon turns out. Oh and at the end of the week the lambing will begin. I can hardly wait.

This is Deborah Moen ~ Signing off

Over and out here in Cedar City, Utah.

~Little Utah Farm~