Making hay

Looking back on my childhood on and around the farm, undoubtedly my favorite activity was making hay in the summer.  It was hard work at a fast pace to stay a step ahead of the weather.  As a dreaming homesteader, I have to say that making hay for winter feeding is one step I've long looked forward to making.  Finally this summer we took that step.

The acreage we bought had about 2-3 acres of old standing alfalfa, meaning its been a number of years since it was last planted.  Typically, alfalfa only lasts for a few years before it is plowed up and replaced with corn.  Since I don't care about getting maximum yields, and don't need corn, I'm content to farm the hay as it is, even if it is getting thinner and with more grass establishing itself in the field.  Our hay field has about 30% alfalfa, with the rest being orchard grass and a type of brome grass.  It makes nice feed for homestead animals, and is more forgiving when it comes to making hay, unlike alfalfa, which needs to be cut at the right time, raked at the right time, and baled at the right time.

I'm still limited in the equipment I have, with a baler being the most obvious missing piece to this ensemble, so I've been left with trying to make do with what I have.  I don't have a barn either, so my only real option was to make an outdoor haystack and cover it as best I can.

Hay making began with my BCS tractor and 30" sickle mower.  It does a pretty decent job, but certainly not of the quality of a modern haybine.  Unlike haybines, which have crimping rollers, the sickle mower cuts the hay off at the ground and lays it over.  Crimping rollers bend the stalks of hay at various places to encourage even and quicker drying.  This is less important when making hay of grasses, versus alfalfa.  Once I had mowed the hay, I borrowed the neighbor's side delivery rake to flip the hay over for further drying.  Because I made the hay during a stretch of 90 degree weather, this probably wasn't necessary, but having a side delivery rake flips the hay over, so the part that had been on the ground gets an opportunity to dry in the sun and air.  This also puts the hay in thicker windrows, making it easier to pick up.  The dump rake I use for gathering hay mulch in the spring doesn't flip the hay--it only gathers it, so if you're trying to make hay for feed, particularly if the hay is thick or you have less than ideal drying conditions, it's important to flip the hay over, either with a rake, or by hand with a fork.

Once the hay had been raked and dried, we made the haystack.  We began by pitting down a layer of wood pallets to get the hay off the ground.  This is important to create a moisture break with the ground.  You don't have to do this, but it will minimize the amount of spoilage on the bottom of the pile.

Once the pallets were arranged, we connected four sections of corn crib rings together to form the outside if the stack, with one section containing a doorway.  Once this was done, we used the 9N tractor and trailer to collect the loose hay, which we gathered with pitch forks, and then piled inside the ring.  The hay was packed and spread until we reached the top.  We ran out of hay before we were able to form a nice crown, which we will finish when I cut the next half of the hayfield.  Finally, we covered the stack with a tarp to protect it from the elements.  Again, you don't have to cover the stack, if you put a good crown on the top of the pile, but you do minimize the spoilage.  Now we have hay to feed our steer through the winter.

BCS tractor with 30" sickle mower

Even my 6 year old son can run the sickle mower. 

 

 

hay cut with sickle mower

raking hay with side delivery rake

 

hay all raked in to windrows

packing hay in to ring made with corn crib sections

nearly completed hay stack.

Asparagus and more

Spring is a full month ahead of last year and at least a couple weeks ahead of normal, so things are really greening and the trees are leafing out. Our fruit tress are showing more life each day, but fortunately have not decided to flower yet. Perhaps they won't flower at all this year (we planted them last spring), but since they're dwarfs and semi-dwarfs, I would expect them to try flowering. We're still getting frosts pretty regularly, so I'd prefer they wait a few more weeks to flower.

I've been waiting for a new blade for the brush hog for the BCS, but since it has not yet come, I sharpened the old one up as best I could--it was pretty rough and jagged from years of rocks, etc.--which alone made quite a difference. It feels like I have twice the power and I can go twice the speed without bogging down. Now that I have it together, I've been mowing all the paths around the gardens and around the woods, but I have a little ways to go.

As inevitably happens in fields like this, you can tell how, over the years, the woods has crept out. As a tree falls down, farmers--especially renters--will just farm around them, and so each year more and more trees grow up until you have a 30-40 foot wide strip that is taken over, often by junk trees like box elder trees. Because of this, we cut a bunch of these trees down and chopped out some of the smaller trees to try to reclaim the farm ground, and get back to the good hardwood trees. In this same area there are quite a few old patches of black berry and black raspberries, but they have a lot of weeds and cockleburs in them, so I'm going to mow them off and start fresh. Because we have rocks in our area, we have to walk through and pick out rocks, as past farmers were prone to just "thrown them down in the woods". Widening the pasture area and clearing the junk trees back to the line of oaks that used to run a long the field will be very nice.

A local guy that raises a great deal of organic produce every year asked me recently if I wanted to buy some asparagus, as he was ordering some 5000 roots because he gets a good deal on the quantity and I agreed to take 500, even though I wasn't quite sure what I'd do with all of them. In the end, he only had about 280, which we planted in last year's potato bed because the soil is so rich and has been worked. We created the trenches by using the rotary plow to kick the dirt each way and laid the roots down in the trenches. We then back-filled. Hopefully they come up decent.

We also laid out an area with black plastic that we are in the process of transplanting strawberries from last year's bed. The place we put them last year seems to shady, so we're going to move them up on higher ground where they can get full son. Hopefully they do well, as our kids love strawberries.

The one thing that has done really well in the shadier garden area we previously used has been the blackberries, which were planted last spring. They seem to like a little less sun and the old soil seems to be treating them well, so once the strawberries are gone, I plan to work the area up again and expand the blackberries.

I also solved one of my dilemmas for the spring regarding the 4-5 acres of farm land on the adjoining 9 acre piece we purchased last fall. It has been in conventional corn (meaning sprays and fertilizers) for the past few years, so I'm anxious to get it back to organic. I don't have the equipment to do it myself, and I had considered seeding it down to a hay/pasture mix, but in talking to one of my neighbors down the road (who once owned and farmed the land we have now), he's going to put corn in the land again this summer. Fortunately, he's organic and is small scale like me, so it will be a win win.

I'm going to attach a few videos that show the main parts of the homestead. I'm sorry if they're a little bumpy to watch. I just snapped them with my phone while walking through the gardens. Enjoy.