Bale Much Hay?

We grow a scant 3 acres of oat hay every year at our truck yard property. It's not much but definitely enough to feed my horses. Last week and Mike got to work slicing and dicing except he missed a spot.

Let's just say after he mowed the field it now sports it's own Mowhawk. Come on husband, what happened here??? Your phone ring or something? That hay would equal about 1.5 minutes of eating for the horses!


So for the past week or so the hay has been drying in anticipation of the finale where it is put into bales. THEN the weather started to turn and a big late rain was forecast and how right they were!!! We called in the troupes to help us since Mike was swamped with work! Grandma and Grandpa came to get the job done.


They hauled over the baler and pick up machine and made short work of everything in about 4 hours. But they have baled thousands upon thousands of acres of hay so they could do this in their sleep.

Grandma greets baby Ella after all the work is done. We were bummed because the kids got up from nap and we hustled over to the field to see the baler in action and they were already finished.

The kids wanted to see the baler working and will just have to wait until next year for their chance.

As we drove in to the yard, I surveyed the field and noticed that there was a little brown body squatting in the middle of the yellow stubble. Yep, my old friends the ground squirrels. Now they will clean up all the left over oats that fell to the ground. They are scurrying little vacuum cleaners. Grrrrr...... I am not so fond of the other things they do.


Mike and Grandpa were unloading the last few bales from the pick up machine. Apparently you can't drop off a partial load with the pickup machine or it will hurt it so they were moving a few bales by hand. Yech!


As soon as we parked the boys were out and crawling all over the pick up machine.


Here is the mini stack of hay. These are two strand bales. That means that the hay is tied together with only two strands of baling twine along the long side of the bale. They weigh about 65-70 lbs. I call them "Lady Bales." Normal "Man Bales" are three stranded and weigh about 110 lbs. I don't mind moving the lady bales but always dread man bales. Those are back breakers!


The whole gang is helping out here. Caught you ADAM! Get your fingers out of your nose!!! Kids and boogers are inseparable aren't they?


And WHY do kids have to walk around with their tongue out? And Suzi, working on Trevor, is trying to pull out a hay splinter from the wimpy child. I swear you would think somebody was torturing him with toothpicks under his fingernails from his whaling!


Luke (with cap on) and Wyatt are pushing the bales around using their man muscles.


And finally the whole stack! Yum. And just in time for tarping. It turned out to rain quite a bit of rain. When stored outside, the bottom bales get a little wet from the water on the ground and they are pretty much no good for horses. But the alternative was to loose the whole field if it was left unbaled, unstacked and untarped.


Thank goodness for grandparents who get things done. I think we have a little over 300 bales from these efforts.