Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes, along with the keeper and Phyllis, that it is that wonderful time of year when hay wagons come out of hiding to become featured display platforms for the colorful produce of the season.
The flatbed old rural work wagons are suddenly everywhere–in farmyards, business parking lots, downtown street corners; and they are all loaded with gourds, pumpkins, squash and tomatoes to give them the unabashed boast of a summer well spent.
The wagons represent survival interaction at its best. It is as simple as sharing necessary nutrition without processors and the corporate supermarkets dominating and dictating how it is that we must embrace technology in order to live. The vulnerable payment box adds to the allure of simple hay wagon marketing.
At one of those wagons at the UW Agriculture demonstration garden just off west Mineral Point Road, Phyllis spent all the keeper’s cash on an assortment of very colorful, mostly hard-shelled items that will be pleasant kitchen counter displays until Phyllis has at them with the tools to turn them into tasty dishes.
This Sunday of Sept. 27, 2026 would be a great day, in the keeper’s humble thinking, for everyone to go find a produce-laden hay wagon and tell it what a great job it is doing.
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