Okay, I started this blog and then seemed to desert it, but I have an excuse. I got my first grandbaby a month ago, and I’ve been a little distracted. But my husband has been putting up small bales of hay, and I was inspired to get back to it. We put up a lot of large round bales to feed the cattle, but we also need small bales for the sheep in the barn.
Normally, we hope to be done with hay before September, but between a wet spring and then the weather getting dry and the hay not growing, here we are, just starting the second cutting in September. The first cutting always goes into big round bales for the cattle. Usually, the second cutting is better hay, so it goes into small bales for the sheep. Then if there is a third cutting, it goes back into big round bales. There will be no third cutting this year. We’re just grateful for a downright hot week in September so we can finish up the second cutting.
When we first got married, putting up small bales was easy — you could always find some high school boys to help (to say nothing of the fact that we were all younger and more up for working in the hay field). But these days finding hay help is almost impossible. There have been times when I have driven the baler and my husband has stacked, and we have worked together to stack the hay in the barn. Hard work for two old fogeys. So enter what I think is the coolest piece of equipment on the farm – the automatic bale wagon. This marvel of modern engineering picks up small bales in the field, stacks them, and offloads them in the barn. Granted, ours is old (circa 1970’s – it blows me away that they had this technology almost 50 years ago) and small (56 bales), and with our dirt barn floor, the stacks of bales often fall over and have to be re-stacked, but it is still an incredible blessing. Watch it work and see if it fascinates you like it does me.
Cool, huh? (Did you hear the sheep in the background near the end? They are excited to see their pantry filling up.)