Anybody who thinks it's that easy, I want your phone number so I can have you come help in about a month or so when it's time for second cutting!
What's so hard? Mother Nature. Heat. Humidity. Rain that messes up your plans for cutting hay. Rain that ruins your partially dry hay. Schedules imposed by the "real world". Heavy, scratchy bales that prick your arms and wear out the denim on your jeans. Dust. Sweat. Sore muscles. Perilous footing on the wagon as it moves around the field behind the baler. Perilous footing up on the stack as you are hefting hay toward the rafters inside the barn. The hay elevator that breaks somewhere around bale 120. . .
Mostly, though, it's gambling with the weather. You're never one hundred percent sure what you'll get there.
Last year my first cutting had two nice days drying in the field. The third day it was still too moist to bale. The weatherman said we only had a 30% chance of rain that night. So, we decided to let it dry one more day.
That night, it poured for hours. And again the next day. And, if I remember right, it even rained some more on the day after that, just for spite. The hay had to lie in the field for about four more days once the rain stopped, before it was dry enough to bale. What ugly bales those were! Washed out, coarse, yellow things. My horses did eat them, grudgingly, but I had about 300 bales more than I needed. Selling them for enough to cover the cost of cutting and baling was difficult. Finally, on some, I took a loss just to get them out of the barn and make room for this year's hay.
Understandably, this year I was gun shy with the weather. When the weatherman said 30% chance of rain, I considered it 100%. So, my hay got cut about 10 days later this year than last year. I was sweating it when, on the third day after cutting, the weather forecast suddenly shot from "sunny with 10% chance of rain" to "isolated thunderstorms". This Spring, isolated had meant it would rain at my house, but probably not six miles away in the village. We started baling hay, breaking tradition by going from the inside of the field (where the hay happened to be ready) to the outside (where it was still rather high in moisture).
Half an hour into baling, I realized I was not going to be able to make the 4:30 blacksmith appointment I had for that afternoon. With clouds filling the western horizon, getting hay up before it rained was more important. I called the blacksmith to reschedule, knowing he would understand. After all, he'd rescheduled on me just a few days before because he was putting up his own hay.
After almost 400 bales, it started to sprinkle. The four or five outer windrows still had not dried down enough to bale without them ending up moldy inside. So we called a halt to baling and concentrated on emptying wagons into the barn. Of course, that's when the hay elevator decided to break.
After spending 20 precious hardly wet minutes fussing with it, we pulled the elevator back up into the loft before the sky decided to open up, and tossed what bales we could up by hand. When the person on the wagon tossing hay could no longer see the loft, let alone reach it, we switched to stacking hay in the lower portion of the barn on pallets.
Wouldn't you know that five minutes after we pulled the hay elevator back up into the loft (no easy feat in itself), it quit sprinkling. Once the third wagon was unloaded, half the hay up in the loft, the other half down on pallets, we were done with hay for the time being. We had a real dinner that night, instead of an exhausted hurry-and-grab-something-anything-meal that usually follows an afternoon of putting up hay. DH, who'd had afternoon meetings at work and couldn't come home early to help with hay, lucked out entirely. We were done for the day before he even left work.
That night, it didn't rain! (Although 10 miles away in town it poured.) And the next morning, it didn't rain. In fact, it was the most sunny, windy day yet! The outer windrows dried. We baled them that afternoon, while DH was at work. We put them in the barn with all the doors wide open so we could enjoy the cooling breeze while stacking hay. DH lucked out again. But really, I felt like the lucky one. 596 bales of primo horse hay. 230 of which I all ready had sold practically faster than they had come out of the baler. A very good first cutting indeed. Makes me wonder what I'm in for with second cutting; surely I can't get so lucky twice in a row!
I mean, we are talking about making hay here. ;0)
Ready to cut.
Cut.
Raked into windrows.
Done!
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