Rolling Out the First Bale - DEC 2025

On December 7th we rolled out the first round bale for the cows and goats.  They were happy to see the gate open.  Thanks to the lime, our pasture held up really good this year.  We had a fair amount of grass, even when neighboring ranchers' grass was poor.  I give the lime application the credit.  We'll do it again this spring.  By December, however, the animals had eaten the grass down and were anxious for the hay they know we have stockpiled for the winter fight outside the fence.

Each year we purchase 10 round bales from a gentleman who delivers them to our home for $40 per bale.  We roll them out in a double row on the property line between our house and the neighbor to the east of us.  We cover it with a tarp.  We noticed that we need to buy a new tarp as ours are in rough shape and did a mediocre job of protecting the quality of the hay.  We were using a really old repurposed outdoor advertising vinyl billboard sign and also a tarp from Harbor Freight that disintegrated.  I'm making calls to Lamar Outdoor Advertising to see if they have any old vinyl signs for sale that I can use as a tarp.

The hay ring is a must to try to keep the hay protected and attempts to keep waste to a minimum.  However, the cows and goats are especially messy eaters.  They waste about a quarter of each bale, pulling it out, dropping it on the ground, stepping on it and then pooping and peeing on it.  The goats, once about half of the bale is eaten, like to hop on top of the bale and sleep.  Of course, they poop on it and then the cows and goats won't eat it.  I'm thinking about putting up a gate and only allow them access to the hay for short periods during the day, so that they only eat and don't lounge around.

We have about 68 square bales in inventory in the hay loft and (now) nine round bales in inventory for the winter.  I'll be calling the gentleman who sells us the round bales for another order of 10 bales in a month or two.  We've found that a round bale lasts about six days before they animals have finished as much as they are going to eat.  We feed them a little sweet feed over the winter, but if they're not in milk, we generally just make sure they have hay to eat.  I do have plenty of turnips planted in the garden to feed them as well.

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.

Round Bale Delivery

How are you at rationing things?  You know, like that half gallon of ice cream in the freezer or that homemade cheesecake in the refrigerator that you want to make last for a while.  Well, we do the same thing with hay.  We have a finite amount of hay and when the grass in the pasture is gone in the winter, we have to manage our resources of hay.  We have 75 square bales of Bermuda up in the hay loft and 10 round bales lined up right outside the pasture gate.

In normal years, we can't count on the grass in the pasture to come in strong so that we don't supplement with hay until right around May.  At about the second week of March, we had run out of round bales.  I think we have around 36 square bales up in the loft.  I made a call to a friend that sells me round bales for a delivery.  He told me it was a good thing that I called as he was just taking inventory of his hay stocks in his barn and had exactly 10 bales left.

Mr. Broussard loaded up 10 bales on his truck and delivered them to me.  We rolled them off of his truck and I lined them up between the wood chip mulch piles and the cattle trailer.  While inflation might be raging elsewhere, his price ($40 per bale) was the same as it was last year.  After unloading, I paid him and had him walk to the garden as I gave him a big bag of mustard greens.

Mr. Broussard manages his hay field expertly, taking soil samples and amending the soil with whatever it needs.  The hay is clean and weed-free.  Once he bales it, he stores it indoors in a barn where it is dark so the sun can't damage it.  It is dry in his barn.  The hay arrives in pristine condition.

As it turns out, the lime applied to our pasture appears to be helping out the pasture.  As a result, the grass is coming in earlier than normal.  All the cows, goats and chickens spend all day in the pasture with heads down, eating.  As it stands now, I won't be needing any of these 10 bales until much later this fall.

That leads to a challenge for us.  We don't have a barn to store the bales inside and in the dark and away from moisture.  The best that we can do is cover it up tightly with tarps.  That's what we began to do, covering it and staking the tarps down with tent pegs so the tarps stay secured on top of the hay, sealing it off from rain, sun, and wind.

It normally takes the cows and goats around a week to finish off a round bale.  So we have at least 10 weeks of inventory of round bales, meaning we shouldn't need any additional round bales until perhaps February of 2026.  In the meantime, we'll continue working our way through the 36 square bales as we'll be taking delivery of more square bales in a couple months.  

Hay Day 2023

In prior years, we got a call from our neighbor down the road that they were making hay.  We'd drive down there with the truck and trailer and load up hay in the field behind the baler.  Picking up in the field, the price is $6 per bale.  If you pick it up in the barn, they have more cost involved, so the price is $7 per bale.  Unfortunately, we were otherwise occupied, so we couldn't pick up on that day.

Benjamin came in and helped us.  I think he pitied us a little, ha ha.  Putting up hay is a big job.  We arrived at around 3 pm in the afternoon.  It was very hot!  All the square bales were stacked up in the barn.  We backed the trailer up right next to the pile and put on our gloves.  Time to get busy.                   

Our order was for 75 bales.  That's a good number for us.  We still have 12 bales left from last year.  We keep round bales out for them to eat free choice.  This good Bermuda hay is like candy for them.  We ration it.

Benjamin would bring me the bales and I would stack in the trailer.  When the trailer was full, we stacked in the back of the truck.  Before long, we had thrown the last bale up on top and were finished!  The little red truck was loaded down.  We drove the one and a half miles back to the house very slowly.  Some of the bales on the truck were balancing precariously and we didn't want to lose them.

Benjamin and the hay

We put the animals away in a different pasture so they wouldn't cause trouble while we put the hay in the barn.  I backed the truck and trailer next to the doors to the hay loft, put the rope and pulley on the 4x4 and Benjamin would hook the bungee cords to the twine on the hay bales and I would hoist each bale up to the loft one by one.

I have a loop on the end of the rope that I put on a nail and then I unhook the bale and slide it down the loft and stack the bales.  The wood floors are smooth from hay running over them year after year.

Here is a better look at the process from up in the loft looking down

Here is a look at the loft all full of hay.  It reminded me a little of the story of the ant that works all summer, so that in the winter, he's ready.  We're ready!  In the winter the grass will be dead, but we'll have some good quality hay put up so that the cows will have something to eat.  They'll need it too, as they'll be calving.

We were soaking wet with sweat, but looking out of the loft at the empty truck and trailer, it was a joyful sight.  Yet another hear of putting up hay was done!

Putting up hay is a wake up call, of sorts.  We'll be both turning 57 years old this year, Tricia in July and me in October.  We thank the Good Lord for the health to still be able to do this.  We do wonder, however, if the Lord tarries, how many more summers of putting up hay do we have left in us?  I guess Plan B is forgetting about square bales and just purchasing round bales.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  For now, we'll cool off and relax.  We'll sleep good tonight!

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 2020

On Thursday, November 5th, we got word from our neighbor down the road that they would be baling hay.  This is good Bermuda hay.  Many people buy it for their horses.  This hay is for our milk cows.  If we wanted hay, we were to be in the field anytime after 3 pm on Friday to pick it up.  They give us a deal.  If we pick it up behind the baler and load it all ourselves, it is $5 per bale.  It has been that price for as long as I can remember.

I left work and sped back home to be in the field before the sun started going down.  The day was a gorgeous, the skies blue with a few wisps of cotton-like clouds above us.  The hay field had been freshly-mown, the grass uniformly cut, raked and baled.  The square bales dotted the acreage in precise, orderly rows.

Russ was at work and Benjamin was at work.  The number of our farm laborers is diminishing rather quickly, but that's okay.  Tricia and I are up to this task.  Work like this keeps us young... or so we try to tell ourselves.  The division of labor goes like this.  Tricia drives the truck.  I walk along behind.  She stops at each bale.  I pick up the bale and neatly stack in the trailer.  As I pick up each bale, I holler out the count and Tricia repeats it.  Easy enough.

The bales are loaded into the old cattle trailer.  This trailer was my grandfather's.  He purchased it in 1978.  I was 12 years old.  The old trailer is like a Timex watch or the Energizer bunny.  It needs a paint job and a few repairs, but it still gets the job done.

We count the bales because we are going to get 70 bales this year.  Approximately 90 fit into our hay loft.  Last year we purchased around 90 and still have 5 bales left.  As we pick up hay bales the old-fashioned way, our neighbor is ahead of us with a fancy "hay-picker-upper."  It picks up the hay, lines the bales up neatly, and flips them over onto the wagon.  The bales are neatly stacked and ready to be placed in the barn.  Automation.  

Here is the driver of our hay-picking up operation.  She is a cruel task-master.  I jest, I jest.  She handed me bottles of water to keep me hydrated and did an excellent job of keeping the truck lined up.  She stopped just when she needed to so that I would be able to pick the bales up and stack them in the cattle trailer.

We filled the trailer and then filled the truck.  It was work, but it was work that made you feel alive.  We got exactly 70 bales loaded.  The truck groaned under the weight, but we slowly made it out of the field and two miles down the road and to our house.

I was unsure if I could pull the trailer into the pasture without bogging down so I unhooked the trailer and drove truckload after truckload back to the barn.

The truck was backed up under the doors of the hayloft.  We used a rope and pulley to hoist the bales up into the loft.  Tricia attached the hooks of the bungee cord to the twine on the bales and I began to pull...

When I got the bale even with the door opening, I hooked the rope onto a nail to hold it in place.

I swung the bale into the loft and removed the bungee cord, sliding the bale into the loft and stacking them up neat and tidy.

When all 70 were pulled into the barn, we rejoiced!

The hay is in the barn.  The loft is like a pantry.  The cows have a stockpile of hay to get them through the winter while the grass in the pasture is dormant and not growing.  Another year of hay gathering all wrapped up!