Hay harvest week is here! After all the work that went into weeding and fertilizing our pastures this Spring, we’re all excited to see how much hay we will be able to harvest this year. With a year of experience under his belt, Farmer Crossley jumped into the fields today to get through the first steps.
Aaron, my dad Dave and our neighbor Duane went into action with the swather, rake and baler. The process takes multiple passes over several days to cut and dry the hay, rake it into windrows and then wrap it into bales.
A lot of excitement surrounds this process every year. It’s one of the few activities on the farm that resembles what you see happening in larger, more industrialized farms. Even our small acreage is best served by all of the loaned equipment that we bring in for these few days.
After a bit of drying in the sun – assuming the weather stays decent – we’ll see these bales rolled up within the week. Then, they’ll be hauled to the edges of the pasture and stored until needed for feeding cattle and goats later this winter. These bales are critical to the care of our animals when all of their usual forage goes dormant. Without this work, we would need to buy bales or sell the animals.
It’s truly incredible to see this cycle play out through another season.