Stealing Hay

David Sparks Ph.D.

 How do we know when times are tough? No. This isn’t a punch line from the Jay Leno Show…it’s a tragic observation. It turns out that apparently the times are so tough that people in rural communities like Blackfoot, Idaho are having to steal hay from their neighbors…or at least that’s what hay farmer and President of the Idaho Hay Association Don Hale thinks: “This time of year a lot of people run out of hay. There grass is not coming as quick as they’d like or they’ve got too many horses or goats so they run out of hay and they’ve also run out of money. What they do is they unfortunately steal it cause they think I’m only taking a bale or two, it doesn’t matter, but it does.”

 And Don has great neighborly advice for people that he thinks are kinda cornered into stealing hay.

 (Hale) “Rather than stealing from your neighbor, go talk to him. Tell him your situation. He can’t read your mind. Hay people are good people. They’re more than willing to help them out. I think people just get embarrassed when they have problems. They’re afraid to tell anybody. Most of them are good people, they just had problems.”