Raking, baling, watching the sky

bales on the right, raked hay on the left.  Lots of work ahead

 Haying weather is really a roll of the dice around here; most of the local farmers don't bother with trying to guess, they just round-bale the first cutting of hay and wrap it, and sell it as silage.  Wrapped bales don't really have to be picked up on any sort of schedule; you'll see them out in the fields for weeks or months until the farmer gets around to it.

The unfortunate part of that is that I don't have a round baler... but this year I watched the weather and saw a little window coming up that looked like haying weather.  So I cut the grass and crossed my fingers; tedded it, and tested it every day for moisture content.   This morning I thought it might work out, so I raked a row and tuned up the baler for bale length and weight.  Around noon the hay tested at 17% moisture, and the race is on.

First cutting has some seed heads and some weeds.  2nd cutting will be finer and better quality

So I had a guy on the tractor baling, and I was working with a crew of four to pick up the bales and toss 'em on a wagon.  One driver, one on the wagon, two people tossing bales up to the wagon deck.   The truck pulling the hay wagon followed the baler, slowly falling behind, until we'd baled about 850 bales.  Took 3 hours to put all of the baled hay into the barn, and then we quit for the night.  If it doesn't rain tonight we'll bale and stack the remainder tommorow.  If it does rain I'll use the grass head on my forage chopper to pick it up, and feed the wet grass to the cows while the field regrows.

I need about a bale a cow a day.  So my herd of 25 cows needs 25 bales a day, or roughly 750 bales a month in hay.  The non-growing season is about 5 months long, so my goal for this year is 3,750 bales of hay stacked and in the barn by september.

If I can get this cutting into the barn without mishap, I'll be more than half-way there.  Crossing my fingers and hoping it doesn't rain tonight.  20% probability.