Haying Hell

When we first got horses, my father-in-law's pasture golf course was beginning to fold... okay, it never really got started... and he decided to let it go to hay for our horses. Between our pasture and his, that first year we got close to 50 big round bales. We were in hay heaven!

As the years went by, we got more horses... the stupid cows... and although we bought "the golf course" from my in-laws, there was less acres to hay as we turned more land into pasture. But still, we had enough for our small herd.

Last year, the unexpected/unpredicted rains washed out our weanrows and we lost a lot of our crop. Come February, we were begging the locals for hay. And hoped to never go through that again.

John cuts all of our hay. In the areas that are too difficult to get a round baler in, he small bales. We were happy to put 130 some bales up the last few weeks. Our neighbor bales the big rounds for us. John cut the half of the big pasture a few days ago as there was little or no rain expected for several days. One farmer warned that he though it might rain Tuesday, but the weather report had 10% chance after 9:00 pm. The clouds rolled in at 7:00. There was a 90% chance it wasn't going to rain, right?

Yeah, right. The farmer who rolls our big rounds managed to get 6 or 7 on the ground before the inch or so of rain came down.

Haying is not for the weak of heart. Rain during haying is like road rage. You want to scream at someone and there is no one to scream at. I can't live with this kind of stress!