Hot Springs & Monterey, VA

Photos The last few weeks has been hay making time in the Highlands, but farmers find they're having to dodge a lot of late afternoon thunderstorms to attend to the task. At left, logger Pendleton Goodall had to run for shelter recently when two storms collided atop Allegheny Mountain. The first strike, pictured above, hit Hull Ridge facing east. Goodall rode the storm out with camera in hand. (Photo courtesy Pen Goodall). At Jacob Hevener's Dividing Waters Farm in Hightown (right), Ivan Puffenbarger's wife, Sis, was raking; son Doug was baling, and grandson Brad (in the loader in the foreground) was stacking last Friday. The Puffenbargers cut the hay on the 40-acre lot "on the shares," meaning they cut the hay and split the profits with the owner. Ivan was just home from the hospital recovering from surgery and unable to work that day, but his family found a time between thunderstorms to get up as much hay as possible. Dividing Waters has been in the Hevener family since 1790. It wasn't always a hayfield, says Hevener. "The land was full of trees back then." (Recorder photo by Charles Garratt)