As the story goes, there was once a farmer and his family. They lived in and farmed a huge and gorgeous valley, right next to an equally huge and gorgeous mountain range.

Each year as the seasons turned into late summer and early fall, the farmer and his sons would begin to store their barns with hay for the winter. Some years they stored just a little for the winter, some years they stored much more.

One year, they began to store hay earlier than ever before. The farmer told his sons that it was going to be a very long and cold winter. As each week began, the farmer would instruct his sons to store more and more, and even more hay.

And then as they got further and further into the fall, the farmer and his sons doubled the amount of hay they stored in the barn.

The father said