Brown Is The New Green.
Cows eat grass. Keep them out of certain fields. Once the fields have grown to a reasonable size, man goes in and hacks everything off a couple inches off the ground. Puts the grass in nature’s own food dehydrator. And takes the result. How cows ever found enough to eat in winter without us is beyond me.
Eight hay fields. Two corn fields. The calf pastures. The cow pastures. The bull field. A sliver of woods. With houses and outbuildings, that is Wotokahan Farm. As of Sunday four of the eight hay fields have been cut, baled and put away. Yay me.
Hay is time intensive. How all these hobby farmers manage to get it done is beyond me. We do our hay mostly old school. We wait for it to get really dry and then put it in round bales tied with twine and put those in the barn. Only mostly because the old school way is to do square bales that all need man-handled and stacked in the mow [pronounced like Mao. also a verb referring to the act of stacking in the mow.]. And the real old school haymakers use horses to do some of the tractor labor. And then even further thrown back are the Amish who don’t even make bales, but sheaves tied up with string. Don’t laugh, it’s still done.
There are ways to do it beyond how we do. Belt, not chain, balers wrap bales up super tight. There are various wraps and plastic bags that the bales can be put in, essentially weather-proofing them. No barns needed. When you’re wrapping them it’s not as important that you get the hay totally dry. Wet bales in a barn will produce enough heat to self combust and burn it all down. Wet bales in a wrap will mold.
Of the four fields, only one ended up being made properly. One was rained on and sat out far too long before it was baled. Most of the leaves were lost. The second field was not quite dry enough, but I didn’t catch it till Haley had already tedded and raked it for that day. So it was tedded back out and raked back up the next day. More lost leaves. The third field buggered the baler. So I only got it half done the day I first tried to bale it and it had to be turned over again the next day. The fourth field was done perfect excepting that I let it dry an extra day. But I had the forecast to allow for that.
Eight hay fields. Two corn fields. The calf pastures. The cow pastures. The bull field. A sliver of woods. With houses and outbuildings, that is Wotokahan Farm. As of Sunday four of the eight hay fields have been cut, baled and put away. Yay me.
Hay is time intensive. How all these hobby farmers manage to get it done is beyond me. We do our hay mostly old school. We wait for it to get really dry and then put it in round bales tied with twine and put those in the barn. Only mostly because the old school way is to do square bales that all need man-handled and stacked in the mow [pronounced like Mao. also a verb referring to the act of stacking in the mow.]. And the real old school haymakers use horses to do some of the tractor labor. And then even further thrown back are the Amish who don’t even make bales, but sheaves tied up with string. Don’t laugh, it’s still done.
There are ways to do it beyond how we do. Belt, not chain, balers wrap bales up super tight. There are various wraps and plastic bags that the bales can be put in, essentially weather-proofing them. No barns needed. When you’re wrapping them it’s not as important that you get the hay totally dry. Wet bales in a barn will produce enough heat to self combust and burn it all down. Wet bales in a wrap will mold.
Of the four fields, only one ended up being made properly. One was rained on and sat out far too long before it was baled. Most of the leaves were lost. The second field was not quite dry enough, but I didn’t catch it till Haley had already tedded and raked it for that day. So it was tedded back out and raked back up the next day. More lost leaves. The third field buggered the baler. So I only got it half done the day I first tried to bale it and it had to be turned over again the next day. The fourth field was done perfect excepting that I let it dry an extra day. But I had the forecast to allow for that.
posted by Lord of the Barnyard at 10:31 AM
4 Comments:
Just don't burn anything down, okay?
Or, put out a mini bale and take some pictures of combustion at work. It'll be fun Drew.
Wow. A lost art. Interesting, especially to a city-gal.
Oh, my.
The story gave me a good laugh. But I'm not laughing AT you, I'm laughing WITH you.
And just as soon as you've finished the first round of haying, field number one is ready to be mown again....
Damn, this takes me back. Most of my childhood memories of summer revolve around hay in some fashion. Back in my field-hand days, we baled squares and prayed for it not to rain. It pretty much always did.
XOXO,
Grace.
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