Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Green Fine Hay for my ewes at lambing........found!

I contacted three farmers for a load of nice 2nd-3rd cutting hay. We have been getting rain 4-5 days a week since mid June. More than 20 inches has fallen! It's made haying difficult. Each farmer called.."sorry Jerry it got a lot of rain on it" In talking to my son Darren, he mentioned his neighbor Dan,  a dairy farmer. "Dan always gets his hay up early, so its fine and has good color."  I called Dan. Yes he had a load on a wagon, 2nd cutting Alfalfa/Orchardgrass. Good sized bales, good smell and nice early cut.. $2.50/per.  Dan said You can pull the rack home, unload it and bring it back.. So I schedule my son to help. We went last night and got the load. The plan was Get home, unload, take the rack back--Well-- We got hit with rain for about 15 minutes before we got home, We tarped the rack in the rain, both of us got soaked.  We dried Darren's clothes, fed him some pancakes and he went home. Early this morning, I took the tarps off........we have a good dry breeze and the sun is out.........letting the surfaces dry off. By 10:30 the bales were completely dry,appeared as if they never got rained on! 60 bales went into the barn...and 70 bales in the garage, yes the pickup will sit out this winter... again..
I started dairy farming in 1976, age 21.......a bank loan for a herd of cows, rented a barn and lived in a trailer. That year we had a drought.....bought 40 acres of standing corn. It made a pitiful pile of silage with very little corn in it.  Hay was expensive and hard to find.  So since then I always stored more hay than I need. This year....I have 370 bales of good hay........with 11 ewes, 2 ewe lambs and 2 ram lambs....I have hay for a couple of years. I figure get it when and while you can.
A pretty sight an empty hay rack !  And bright green hay!
Jerry
 

2 comments:

Gail V said...

I am so jealous.
Still waiting for a second rack of grass hay to balance with our stemmy alfalfa!

Michelle said...

That I got extra hay last year when it was available has been our salvation this year, when good hay is VERY hard to come by. We've found 4 1/2 tons; still need another 10!