Hayday!

Hay growers worry and wonder all year how their hay is growing. When it's haying time, they don't sleep until they know it's sold and taken care of.

Their customers have the other side of the worry....making sure we can afford it and that we can get it when the gettin' is good. Hay prices have gone way up. And if you don't get all you can in the summertime, you'll find it very difficult to locate any grass hay in the middle of winter here in the Valley. The growers will have sold every last bale to people in the East side. Weird how that goes, because there's also a steep price to be paid over here for "East Hay", shipped from over there to over here. WTH?

But fortunately, we were lucky, and we are celebrating a little tonight, because the Miller Hay is now in barn!

WHEW!

Side note: We really prefer 3-string bales, which is what we had last year and what fits best in our 5 custom-built feeders. But they are simply not to be found anywhere anymore. The growers are moving to "big bales". We used a few of these big bales over the winter when we ran out of others. They aren't our favorite for ease of feeding each day, but we are trading that for the convenience and security of having it all in the barn in a few hours' time. We need to get to next year at this time without running out! We know it's good quality (it's the same grower as last year's), and it's nicely placed. So we'll deal with the day-to-day hassle of how to get it stuffed into the feeders. It's a trade-off.

And maybe this way, our backs won't suffer from trying to man-handle the 3-string, 125-lb suckers....there's no lifting or even body-slamming these giants!

Here is the barn beforehand....all clean, measured out, and ready to fill. We were expecting to have to put some bales up on the loft, but it turns out that the bales are so dense, heavy, and big, putting them up there wasn't going to be an option - and really not necessary anyway, because we can fit all the tonnage on the floor.

This was during the drop off... first they bring the bales in, and then at the end they bring their tractor to stack it in the barn.

Unloading. Not very orderly, but that part comes later. We had 23 bales piled all over the place (15 ton - yes, that's 1300 lbs per bale!)

Picking up 2 at a time, which made things fast, organized, and efficient.

It was a tight fit getting into the door, and he could take it only straight on.

There just wasn't much margin with a tractor that large and long.

Setting down the first 2 bales in the back corner.

Because of the weird angle for one side of the stack, we used our little tractor to press on the corner to get them in straight. Our tractor is not big enough for the big jobs like the actually mowing and stacking, but it sure is maneuverable, especially in tight spaces.

Afterwards....all full up. 

A barn full of sweet-smelling hay is a beautiful thing!