Bay Haymakers
BAY HAYMAKERS.
Crop of Sea Grass They Secure from Bottom of Chesapeake.
The haymakers of the Chesapeake Bay waters are almost a class by themselves, living apart from their fellow baymen in little shacks on jutting points or on the marshy islands. Their harvest comes from the bottom of the bay, where it grows in long, waving ribbons -- "the sea moss" or "sea grass."
As one sails over the shoals, say of Honga or Tangier sounds, the bottom is seen to alternate between dark greenish patches and areas of white or light gray. The dark places are the "grassy bottoms," where the crabs hide and the striped bass hover around. They are also the growing fields of the "moss" gatherers, who are beginning to develop them in a way that is all their own.
Every storm sends the waves thrashing over the grassy bottoms, and myriads of the narrow, flat stalks are torn loose and go undulating in the water hither and thither as the tide and the wind list. At last, entangled with other strands, they are cast upon the sand or thrown among the marsh growths of such islands as Bloodsworth, Hooper and Smith. Here the grass is found in lumps and snarls sometimes several feet high, having been heaped there by prolonged storms.
The odor of it is sweet and fragrant, and the look of it fit to stop the passerby, for it lies in rounded windrows, striped and lined with a free hand, as though some barbaric artist had been pleasing himself with hit-or-miss designs in purples and greens. As the storm waves come in, breaking on the shoal beach, one sees the rolls of grass winding over and over in the frothy breakers, with ends flying up and ahead as the water pours toward the hummocky marshland. Back and forth the grass washes, till some big wave carries it far up toward the tiny dirt cliff and throws it to the edge of the wave line, marked already by an accumulation of grass.
When the storm dies away it is seen that the grass is piled along the top of the marshland brim in long, low windrows, ready to be cocked up by the grass harvesters. Then to the islands come the haymakers, with pitchforks and wearing hip boots, in their three-log canoes or in their plank batteaus.
They work along the waterfront, picking up parts of the windrows with their forks, shaking the sticks and other driftwood out of each forkful. Quickly they get a "load" for the fork. As large a pile as can be conveniently carried on the tines is made on any bare spot in the rank marsh grass, and then the worker picks it all up on his fork, slings it over his shoulder and wades out into the rippling water to the boat riding at anchor, perhaps a hundred yards away. Here he loads it on the craft and returns to the task of getting another forkful.
It is pick up, shake out and toss, hour after hour, usually from near dawn till toward noon. As the men come down on the ebb tide, it frequently happens that the boats are left on the beach in the low tide and tilt far over while the load is "making."
The coming of the flood tide straightens up the boats along the shore, and the last few forkfulls are carried aboard, perhaps, with the waves rolling so high as to fill the high boots. Then the anchor is hoisted, the sail spread and the run home made. The baymen know their business; they go and come with the tide as much as possible, so as to save work with the oars should the boat be caught in a calm.
After picking and "toting" the grass from the windrow, the haymaker complains of lame back and sore arms. He declares that it's the hardest work he ever did do, and sometimes a new hand will find himself unable to work at all for a week after his first experience, every movement being accompanied by darting pains in biceps and forearms, not to mention the steady ache in the small of his back.
Nevertheless, the true haymaker returns to his task, for it is attractive. Of a thousand men eight or ten find the gathering of this sea crop just suited to their character. Like "sand" (ginseng) hunters, or trappers, or other "lone travellers," the haymaker of the Chesapeake enjoys the lonely work of gathering the grass. His fellows are in sight, but perhaps they are working across a strait on another island and at the nearest are too far way for much talk, since each man must take his own section of a windrow, 200 or 300 yards long.
When one island has been stripped the haymakers go cruising for more. They seek the windward shores. Sometimes they get all the islands picked over after a storm, but they can usually be busy all the while, finding the grass and "making" it, except in storms and freezes.
In the summer the crab dredgers rake back and forth over the grassy bottoms, picking up the crabs hiding in the fluttering mass. The iron rakes tear out the grass over many acres, and the crabber casts the strands back into the water, while saving the softshells, shedders and hardshells which he captures. These lumps of grass soon go ashore and are picked up, being the best the haymakers get. In the fall, winter and early spring between storms "dead" grass is gathered.
A canoe loaded with sea grass looks its kinship to a wagonload of hay. It rounds up and bulges out on all sides. Woe to the haymakers caught by a squall! It takes baymanship then to save the load and get it safely to the drying grounds, but it is usually done, though sometimes the top of the load is carried away in far flying tufts.
Having gathered the hay, the makers take it to a sunny beach -- the sunnier and sandier it is the better. Here they spread the load out and dry it. One sees an acre of land covered with the sweet smelling grass fairly steaming in the sun. Back and forth over the mass work the men, turning the grass incessantly, and in a few hours it is perfectly dry and sand shaken out of it. Then it is put into a heap beside a bale press and packed into bales of a hundred and fifty pounds weight each.
Each haymaker's crop is kept separate from the other "catches" and baled. Then the steel yards tell the story of the financial side of the business. The great heap, covering the boat from mast to tiller, and hanging down over the sides, dries out and packs down to half a ton, or about $8 for the day's work for two men and their boat -- less, rather than more.
The buyer sends the bales to Baltimore by steamer, where they are opened and the grass put through a hackle, which cuts it up into short lengths. Then it is reballed and shipped in all directions for packing china, stuffing carriage sets and for filling mattresses and cushions.
It is a comparatively new business, having begun to grow up on the bay in the last two or three years, but sea grass is now another of the many staple crops harvested from the Chesapeake.