Years ago when I was in college, my father had a massive heart attack. We had never had health insurance, so this was a huge financial hardship in addition to the medical one. My mother was an at-home mom, my brother was in high school and my sister was in grade school. I dropped out of college and returned home to do what I could to help. At one point we had only a couple of days worth of hay to feed a milk cow, around 8 dairy goats, and a couple of horses. We didn't know where we were going to be able to get more hay and the coldest part of the winter had just settled in (and I am talking North Dakota winter, with a foot of snow and wind chills of 40-60 degrees below zero). Even if we had known someone with extra hay, we didn't have the money to pay for it. That night, the dogs made a fuss in the yard but I was so exhausted that I figured that whatever was going on out there would have to wait for daylight the next day. The next day's sun rose on a semi-load stack of alfalfa hay. We never found out who delivered it or where it came from. My mother had suspicions and tried hard to find out who we needed to thank, but nobody would confess to knowledge of how all that hay got there.
