The fading of agrarian smarts today finds many folks unaware of the significant difference between straw and hay.

Hey, it’s the hay time of year – or are they bales of straw now on seasonal display?

I don’t hail from a farming background. The only crops common to my backcountry kin were rye and corn … for mash. However, I have had occasion to feed hay to everything from horses and goats to llamas and alpacas, thus my hay smarts are decently rooted.

I can also hark back to kid times when “hay” was the strongest cuss-like word we could unloose, as in “What the hay!?”