Hurray for Hay

I was inside the house when I heard an unfamiliar mechanical noise…almost like a train was approaching which I do hear from time to time, but somewhat different.  I went outside to discover that Glenn was cutting the grass in one of the pastures (10 acres) to put up for hay.

You read that right…put up hay.

Yes, I remember a few years back when I mentioned that we would no longer be making hay. We had changed our farm management a bit and decided to buy hay if we needed to supplement our ‘grass-fed on pasture’ program.  Glenn went as far as selling all our hay-making equipment.  It was good equipment which we sold for an almost fair price. We always seem to buy high and sell low.  But, we no longer needed it.  So, he said. So, he assured me.

Recently, Glenn decided to fine-tune his management program and with that decision came the announcement to put a bit of haying back into the mix. He discovered that the pastures needed mowing every few years to help eliminate the undesirable plants that the cows nor the sheep were eating.  Left unchecked, unmowed or uneaten, these nuisance plants would keep taking over a bigger chunk of the desirable pasture. That is not in THE PLAN.

Well, you can probably see where I am going.  Yep…Glenn had to buy hay equipment so that he could hay again.  Naturally, we bought used and a bit on the high side priced equipment.  And, today, Glenn started to cut the grass down which is the first step in haying process.  He never told me his plan, but I sure did hear it.

I am a bit confused, though, as to the piece of equipment he was using.  We use to cut our grass with a haybine.  The equipment Glenn was pulling around the field was no haybine.  And, the sound it made was not the sound of a haybine which thuds like constant pounding.  Today’s sound was like train wheels rolling with a bit of high-pitched whirl.  I will ask Glenn when he gets back up to the house.

The next step…letting the grass dry.  The forecast calls for at least four days of sunshine, so I hope all holds true.

This is where haying gets tricky.  The grass needs to dry completely without a bit of precipitation falling on it. Well, that is the best case scenario.  It is also the part that causes the greatest anxiety because many times the forecast is wrong and the rain comes. Rain denigrates the quality of the hay.

Now, we will just wait and see.  Once the grass is dried, it will be raked into rows and baled.  I did not think we even had a baler yet, but a baler is crucial to putting up hay.

I guess I will ask Glenn about the baler, too.

The upside is that I love the smell that permeates from the hay-making process – fresh, earthy and kind of sweet.  I also like how the barn swallows swoop around the tractor, as the grass is being raked and baled, catching insects. 

I am glad we are back in the haymaking business, if only in a limited way. 

raking dried grass into rows

picking up grass and rolling into huge round bales

morning after baling - beautiful!

Update:  There has been no rain.  The grass dried. Glenn raked the rows into larger rows on Friday.  I was right…we have no baler at this moment.  A neighbor, who owed Glenn some time or money for a logging job he did a month or so ago, came over to bale the hay to reimburse his obligation to us.  Now, Glenn is out in the hot sun moving the huge round bales of hay, 32 in total, out of the field and into the pole barn for storage.  With a roof overhead, these bales can last at least two years and still be nutritious for our cattle.

As for his mower, instead of a haybine, Glenn had purchased a used rotary disc mower.  He decided that was a fine purchase and he likes this style of mower over his old haybine.  Yippee! Chalk one up for doing something right.

Now, Glenn is looking for a used baler to put back into his equipment inventory and to have the next time he needs to bale which will be at the end of summer since he just planted 40 acres of millet (a future blog – check back again).

Hurray for HAY!