Make Hay While the Sun Shines

Timely rains coupled with the positive effects of the first year in 24 that we limed the pasture resulted in plenty of grass in our pasture. We are a small homestead farm, raising animals to primarily feed our family.  Allan Nation, of Stockman Grass Farmer, once said, "Don't measure success by acres owned or animals counted-measure it by the health of your soil, the resilience of your land and the life it sustains."  In short, he's saying, you're not an animal farmer, you're a grass farmer!

When grass stops growing, you've got to still have grass in a stockpile.  We do that by purchasing hay.  Each year we buy hay from two sources - a neighbor down the road grows good Bermuda hay that he primarily grows for horses.  It is usually clean and the cows and goats enjoy eating it in the cold days of winter when there's not a green blade growing.  We also buy round bales from a rancher who grows quality Bermuda hay and follows the principles of Allan Nation, resulting in the production of reliable hay.

We got the call from the neighbor growing round bales that they would be baling the following afternoon.  If we pick it up behind the baler, it's $7 per bale.  If we pick it up from their barn, it's $9 per bale.  You already know which option we chose.  It's funny how things change in a year.  Last year, following my heart surgery, I was out of commission, unable to lift hay.  My Dad, my brother-in-law, my sons, my wife, and my brother-in-laws sons had my back - literally, as they got the hay in the barn.  This year, all healed up, Tricia and I hooked up the cattle trailer and made the mile drive to the neighbor's hay field.  They had started baling at 12:30 pm and had around 100 bales already on the ground.

This year, the neighbor had a new baler.  The bales were smaller, but tightly packed.  I liked the fact that he had affixed Old Glory to the back of his baler and the flag was blowing in the wind.  I'm glad to give my money to Patriotic Americans proud of their country and still working and enjoying an agricultural way of life.  We had originally purchased from the neighbor's grandfather, who has now passed on, but his grandson picked up the hay baling responsibilities and was carrying on the responsibilities.

Tricia drove the truck.  It is a 2000 model Toyota PreRunner with 254,000 miles still going strong.  It still blows cool air, and that's important for the driver, my wife, who wasn't enthused about me trying to get a photo of her.

She was pulling the cattle trailer.  I think it is a 1976 model, originally painted a goldish-yellow color, and was my grandfather's.  It has some rust and is showing its age, but it still gets the job done.  As Tricia drove between the bales, my job was to load the trailer with bales of hay.  The hay had been cut the day before, cured in the sun, fluffed and now, it was baled.

We still have 16 square bales from last year, so according to our calculations, we'd need 60 bales to get our inventory where we want it to be in the hay loft.  We got our 60 bales loaded in just under 30 minutes, paid the neighbor, and drove back to the house.

The job was far from over though.  Now, we had to get it up in the loft.  We backed the trailer up to the barn, affixed the pulley and rope to the 4x4 that is positioned over the door.  The rope has a bungee cord with hooks on one end.  I lower the rope, Tricia hooks a hay bale on and I pull it up to the loft.  The other end of the rope has a circle on it.  When I pull it up, I put the circle over a nail I have driven in a rafter.

The sun was going down and we had to work fast.

With the circle over a nail, the bale is held in place, allowing me to run to the edge and unhook the hay bale.

I slide each bale down to the end of the loft and begin stacking it.  The 2x12 lumber that makes up the floor of the loft has been rubbed smooth over the years by hay sliding across it.  If my math is right (that's a big if), this will have been our 18th year of putting up hay in the loft.

We count as we go and before the sun went down, the 60th bale came up the pulley!

We had previously dropped down the 16 bales still remaining from last year's crop into a stall in the barn.  Using LIFO (last in first out) accounting method, we'll use the old hay first in feeding this winter.

All the hay is packed nicely up in the loft.  We can get 3 bales stacked across and four high or 12 bales per stack.  It fits snugly, but nicely up there.

It was good to get the job done.  Tricia and I slept good that night.  After a hard day's work, a sound sleep in a comfortable bed is a relaxing and rewarding experience.  You put up stores while the weather is nice in preparation for upcoming days when the weather won't be nice.  Joseph did this same thing in Genesis when he put up grain in the 7 years of plenty in preparation for 7 years of famine that would affect Egypt and surrounding countries.  God gave him wisdom and in so doing, many lives were saved.  You gotta make hay while the sun shines.

Hay Day Part I

The day that I came home from the hospital, we got a call from our neighbor down the road that they were baling hay and asked if we could go pick up our order.  It's Bermuda hay and this year's price is $7 picked up in the field and $9 picked up in the barn.  Obviously, picking up 75 bales of hay was out of the question.  We normally pick it up in the field, but asked if they could stack it in the barn and we would pick it up once I was recuperated.

I got a call yesterday that they were cutting again and needed the space.  Our hay was in the way.  I'm not fully recuperated, but the hay had to be moved.  So, I called Russ and Benjamin to come by after work and we could tackle it together.  Russ said with me not being 100% and Benjamin not being fully healed from his accident, that we were like the "Island of misfit toys."  He called my Dad for assistance and Dad drove over from Kinder to pitch in.  What a sight we were!

We backed up the truck in their barn and began loading up the truck.  We had 75 bales to pick up and bring back to the house.  We're about a mile from their barn to our house and would have to make 6 to 7 trips.

In the first load, we stacked up 12 bales.  We quickly learned that by stacking the bales and interlocking them, we could fit 16 or 17 bales.  We had a little assembly line going and got better with each load.

It was hot and we worked hard.  So did the truck.  You can see it is squatted down pretty good.  I was hoping we wouldn't break the springs.  Russ and Benjamin rode up on top of the hay on the ride home where we backed up to the garage.

Normally, at this point, we back up to the barn and use a pulley to hoist the bales up into the loft.  We'll have to wait on that for another day when we have more help.  For now, so the hay doesn't get rained on, we stacked up the 75 bales in the garage.  

The car, for now, will sit outside.  It can get wet.  The hay cannot.  This is what will get the cows and goats through the winter.  I'm not convinced they realize the work and sacrifice that goes into feeding them!  Unloading the hay has Belle exhausted just watching the work!!  Can you see her in the bottom right corner?

Here is a side view of 75 square bales of bermuda hay.  Inflation has hit the hay field, too!

Ginger, our cat, doesn't seem to mind the hay in the garage.  It's given her a new place to nap.  Lazy cat!

Speaking of naps, I think I'll go take one myself.  Well show you Part II when we move all this up into the hayloft at the barn.

Grass Farmer

I've been told for a long time that if you're intending to raise cattle, or goats, or chickens, like we are, you'd better consider yourself a grass farmer first.  For grass is the one thing that you must grow in order to have healthy livestock roaming on your pasture.  While it might seem like an easy thing, sometimes it's not.  Our soil pH is low and this means that a lot of the fertility in the soil is locked up, unusable to the grass.  I really need to lime.

Sometimes you don't get the rainfall that you need.  Last year we got very little rainfall and the grass was virtually non-existent.  Sometimes you get too much.  The photo below shows a view of the pasture.  You can see the four boxes of bees and a dead willow tree that I need to fell before it falls over the fence.

You can also see the grass in various stages of growth.  The pasture is made up of a bermuda and bahai mix.  Much of the grass has matured and has seed heads on it.  The cows aren't fired up about eating that and it doesn't have the nutritional load that lush spring grass packs.  But they'll eventually eat it.

The grass, looking back the other direction, is thick.  It has grown up also because it's gotten real hot.  Instead of eating grass all day, the cows lay up in the shade all day and only go out to graze in the late afternoon/night.  As you walk through the tall grass, mosquitoes, horse flies and deer flies hover around giving us and the livestock fits.

There's more than bermuda and bahia grass out there and I've always got my head on a swivel.  I don't want invasive weed species to invade.  This afternoon I looked around and saw some of this coming up.  We always called it bitterweed.  Supposedly, if your cows get into this and eat it, it makes their milk taste bitter.  For that reason, I don't want tot let it get a foothold.

I promptly pull this up by the roots, making several passes to ensure I don't see any more.

I'm okay with different grasses and even weeds growing out in the pasture.  It lets the animals free-range and eat what they like, but I'll always be on the lookout for those species of weeds that I don't want on the homestead.

Seventy Square Bales up in the Loft

 "I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was." - Toby Keith

It's a startling and humbling discovery when you find and must admit that you just can't do what you used to do.  Your body tells you, "You can't do this, boy.  But your pride says, "Oh, yes you can."  I say this to preface today's posting.  We walked down past the neighbor's Jiggs Bermuda pasture and saw that they had cut it.  I called them and they said, "Yep, we'll be baling at 2 pm on Wednesday."  The price was $6 per bale picked up in the field or $7 in the barn.  We are frugal farmers, so you know which price point we selected?

We hooked up the trailer and made the 1 mile drive west down our road and drove into the field.  My wife drove the truck and would position the trailer close to the bales and I would load the bales into the trailer.  To keep count, I would call out the number I was loading and Tricia would repeat the number.  After loading the first bale, I was chased out of the trailer by a nest of wasps that were hiding in there.  I was still fresh and full of vigor and ran quickly and didn't get stung.  We made a quick drive back home and killed 8 or 10 very angry red wasps.  Then we drove back and got down to business.

It was 3:15 by this time and we had church at 6, so we needed to really get down to business.

You can stack hay four bales high in the trailer and three wide.  With each bale put in, it's a shorter walk.  This is good hay - horse hay.  We use this sparingly during the winter.  We roll out round bales that they eat on all the time, but for the good square bales, we ration it, giving them a slice while we're milking.

 

Pretty soon, the trailer was full!  But there was still work to do.  We weren't at 70 bales yet.  I strapped the gate closed since it was too full to properly latch.

Our neighbors were fluffing, raking and baling right ahead of us.  Baling hay is always a beautiful sight to me.  

The hay field was full of square bales - much more than we could use.  They had customers that were loading like we were.  They also had a contraption that would pick up the bales, stack on a trailer being pulled by a tractor.  One man.  He'd drive it to the barn, tip the trailer over, and it was stacked perfectly without the exertion of any energy (by the man).

While we're on the topic of exertion of energy, well...  The trailer was loaded and the truck was loaded.  The old truck creaked under the load.  I tell you, it took everything I had to throw those last bales up on top of the truck.  I was, as they used to say, tuckered out.

I hopped in the truck.  My driver, the "hay maiden," was counting out money to pay the neighbors.  $420 to be exact.  The price was up $1 per bale this year, but it had been $5 a bale for years.  It's good hay.  They are our neighbors.  We like to buy local and it doesn't get more local than this!  I sat down and drank a full Yeti cup of ice cold water.  Ahhhhh!

We drove home very, very slowly and turned in the driveway.  I got a jack and disconnected the trailer.  Then we opened the pasture gate and backed the truck full of hay right next to the barn.  I climbed up into the loft and opened the doors and put the pulley and rope on the 4x4.  Now comes the really hard part.

Tricia clips the bungee cord hooks to the baling twine.  I grunt and groan and pull each bale up.  The rope has a ring on the end.  When the bale is even with the door, I put the ring on the nail to hold it while I grab the bale and swing it into the loft.

Just like in the trailer, I start stacking the hay.  I push the bales to the end.  The 2x12 wooden floor to the loft is smooth and shiny as it's been polished by pushing hay on it over the years.

We got 35 bales up in the barn before I looked at the clock and decided it was quittin' time if we wanted to make it to church.  Besides, I don't think I could've pulled another bale up.

After a good night's sleep, Tricia and I went out to the barn to conclude our work.  We were a little sore from the night before, but each bale put up was one bale closer to the end.  That's how you gotta think.  By and by, the work was done.  The hay was in the barn.  Another year done!  

The tired hay workers walked slowly into the house.  Part of us rejoiced as the work was finished.  The other part of us just wanted to lay down and rest.  Hay Day 2022 is in the books!

A Loft(y) Goal

 A loft(y) goal.  Pardon the pun.

We got a text from our neighbor down the road that said, "We're baling hay and trying to get it done between rainfall.  Can you come pick it up?  $5 per bale picked up in the field. $6 per bale picked up in the barn."  Tricia contacted me and I did my best to finish pressing work at my job so that I could leave an hour early and head home to get the hay.  I left at 3:35 pm and made the 40 minute commute home.

Tricia and Benjamin had hooked up the cattle trailer to the truck and were ready to roll when I pulled up in the driveway.  I quickly changed and we made the 1 mile trip down the road to pick up the hay.  Our order was for 70 square bales of good Bermuda hay.  Our goal for the day was to pick up 70 bales behind the baler, pack them into the trailer and truck, bring it home, load it into the hayloft in the barn.  The over-riding goal was to get this all done before it rained on the hay.

It was really threatening to rain.  Note the rain you can see falling from the clouds as we arrived in the field at 4:30.

We moved FAST!  We each had a role to play.  Tricia drove the truck.  Benjamin loaded the hay bales into the back of the trailer, and I stacked the bales tightly in the trailer.

We kept an accurate count by calling out the number of bales as they were transferred into the trailer.

Tricia lined up the truck between the rows of hay that just came out of the back of the baler.  She would stop as the back of the trailer was lined up with the bales, so we wouldn't have to carry them far.  It was hot, but not oppressively so.  The trailer filled up quickly.

In order to get 70 in one trip, we had to stack the bales in the back of the truck, too.  The truck was squatting down in the back with all the weight of the hay, but she got the job done.

Benjamin, with all his youthful energy, would throw the bales easily to the top.

Finally, the 70th bale was loaded and our work in the field was done.  Benjamin rode on top of the hay on the way back home.  We made record time loading the hay - only 20 minutes lapsed between arriving and leaving.  We were in such a rush to beat the rain, we forgot the money to pay the neighbor, so Tricia headed back to pay as soon as we got home.

The work in the field was done, but we still had to load all the hay into the hay loft in the barn.  The pasture was too wet to pull the weight of the trailer to the barn, so we unhitched the trailer and made several trips to the barn in just the truck - about 16 bales each trip.

We have a pulley on a 4x4 in which we hook the hay by bungee strap and pull each bale up into the barn and then stack it.

We got all the bales stacked neatly in the loft.  They fit with a few to spare.  This will get us through the winter.  We also purchase round bales of hay from another neighbor friend.  We were happy to have the work done.

The work crew was still smiling after all the hard work.

We were sweaty and smelly.  We will certainly sleep good tonight!

We're always a little nervous about the hay spontaneously combusting and burning down the barn.  This happens if the hay isn't properly cured.  We just have to trust our neighbors.  They are professionals in what they do and have done it for many years.  For safety, we did move Elsie out of the barn for the night.  I can hear her mooing as I type.  The hay is in the barn and our goal was reached!  Hallelujah!!

Hay Day 2019

We got the call that we normally get this time of year from some neighbors down the road.  It goes something like this, "Hey, we'll be baling hay tomorrow afternoon.  Can ya'll come pick up behind the baler?"  We always say, "Yes!"  Putting hay up in the barn is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one.  We don't have enough land to bale hay, so we always purchase between 75 and 80 square bales of good Jiggs Bermuda.  We also purchase round bales from another farmer.  We keep the round bales out in a hay ring in the pasture for about 6 months of the year.

I got in from work and hooked up the cattle trailer behind Benjamin's truck and drove west for about a half of a mile where the neighbors were baling in a field in front of their house.  Tricia drives the truck, I walk behind and toss the bales in the trailer and Benjamin rides in the trailer and stacks.  (Except in the photo below. This was the first bale.)

We decided we were going to get 80 bales this year, so as I threw them in the trailer, I would yell the count and Benjamin would repeat it so we don't lose count.  The neighbors were baling right ahead of us with one tractor 'fluffing' the hay, one tractor baling it, and another with a wagon, picking up the bales that we didn't purchase to put in their barn for later.  For picking it up right behind the baler, we get the hay for $5.50 per bale.  In the photo below, you can see the baler in the center left.

We had to make two separate trips to get 80 bales total, but we live nearby, so we got it done.  When we get the hay back to our farm, that's when the REAL hard work begins.  We have to get it up into the hay loft.  It ain't easy.  We use a pulley and lots of manual labor.  Benjamin hooks the hay up with a bungee strap and I pull it up.

I tied a ring around the end of the rope and drove a nail into the rafter.  Once the bale is pulled up, I put the ring in the nail, so I'm able to walk back and pull the bale into the loft.  Then I slide the bale down the loft and stack it up.  I can stack three bales across and four bales high, so twelve bales per row.  We try to stack it real tight to make the most of our space.

While I am pulling the bale, there's plenty of work going on down below.  Tricia is moving bales from the back of the trailer and stacking them up on the end.  Benjamin then moves them off the trailer and stacks them below the rope and gets ready to attach another to the bungee strap.

Here is the hot, tired... no, exhausted work crew ready for something cold to drink.

We were able to put 80 bales in the loft, just leaving a narrow walk-way down the middle from the trap-door to the end.

We had 12 bales left over from the winter, so we moved them down into the bull's stall and we'll feed those out first.  First in, first out!  The grass is quickly transitioning from leafy growth to seed heads, so they'll need some supplemental hay soon.

We will be reducing the size of our herd soon, taking the oldest bull to the slaughterhouse and will likely sell one of the other bulls.  That would leave us with one bull remaining for meat that we will bring to the butcher shop at the end of summer 2020.

For now, we have all the square bales put away for the winter.  It always is a relief to have this done.  I'll make a phone call to reserve round bales for the winter.  We looked at paperwork and found that we have been averaging spending about $1,000 per year on hay - about half for square bales and half for round bales.