Each week, usually on Thursday, we drive down to the community of Goodview, to the shores of Smith Mountain Lake, a visit Merle and Marianna Dutton. As we drive through the rural countryside we see that the first hay crop is being harvested. In this part of the country and all through the Midwest as well, these huge rolled bails seem to be the prefered way of preserving the hay crop. The harvesting machinge wraps each of thess rolls with numerous wraps of binder twine or something like it. These bails with sit in the fields for many days before specialized equipment is finally used to pick these huge bails up and load them on a truck or trailer. We see where some farmers wrap their bails in some type of plasitc covering to protect them from the elements, but mostly they remain as you see them in this picture.