Moving hay

Late last June, if you remember, we purchased fifteen 600-lb. round bales of hay (4.5 tons) delivered for our upcoming winter cattle feed. (Ironically the farmer delivered them during one of the fiercest thunderstorms we've had in a long time.) After the weather calmed down, Don neatly stacked the bales in the front driveway and we tarped them against any subsequent rainstorms.

Now it was time to move those bales from the front of the house to the back, where we wanted to stack as many inside the barn as would fit.

One thing became apparent at the time the bales were delivered: These bales weighed way, way more than 600 lbs. each. Don estimates they exceed 800 lbs. The farmer was apologetic; apparently he had never used a round baler before, and it took some adjustment, so the bales turned out a lot bigger than he anticipated. Still, he gave us 15 bales at the original price he quoted, so we weren't arguing that we got closer to six tons for the price of four and a half.

These bales were almost comically misshapen. Most were wound tighter on one end than the other, leading to a humorous mushroom shape. But hey, we weren't arguing about their appearance. We appreciated the extra tonnage.

But the extra-heavy bales did present one quandary: Our tractor couldn't lift them using the front-loader spikes, which cantilever weight away from the main body of the tractor. How were we going to move 15 bales from the front driveway to the barn in back?

So, after doing some research, Don made one of the few new purchases we've made since I lost my job last February: A hay bale spike that goes on the back of the tractor. Attached to the three-point hitch, this spike is able to lift a couple thousand pounds, so it easily handled the round bales.

More and more farmers are transitioning to round bales, so this purchase was way overdue.

Anyway, with the change in weather, Don was anxious to get as much hay under cover as possible. The cattle were almost finished with the last of the old hay, so Don took the opportunity to clean out the center part of the barn. This was highly educational, as he kept uncovering tools or items that had been missing for nearly five years, since we moved in ("So that's where my spare Sawzall went!").

Finally, after about a week of sorting and tidying, the center part of the barn was fairly open. (If you peer closely, you can see what's left of the last remaining old hay bale in the center back.)

Don untarped the new hay bales. Some of the bales had a few rotty spots, but for the most part they were in very good condition. Additionally, these bales are much higher quality hay than the stuff we'd bought last spring to tide us over.

One by one, Don positioned the tractor by a bale, backed the spike into it, and lifted the bale into the air. 

Then he drove around to the lower driveway and brought the bale to the barn.

Once at the opening of the barn, he dropped the bale just outside.

Then he turned the tractor around and, using the bucket, tipped it on its end. Alley-oop!

Once it was tipped up, he used the bucket to slide the bale over the concrete floor of the barn. His goal was to cram as many bales in the barn as possible. There is very little maneuvering room in this space, so it's not like we could stack them or anything. Besides, we needed the bales to be positioned so that we could cut the twine that binds them and unpeel the hay when it's time to feed the animals.

You can see the size difference between these newer bales (left) and the last remnant of the old 500-lb bales we bought last March (right). For one thing, the newer bales are over five feet high (they're taller than me), and wider in diameter. (This photo is an unfair comparison since the old bale is mostly used up.)

In the end, Don managed to squeeze 10 of the 15 bales into the barn, nine of which are shown below.

For the remaining five bales, he laid down pallets just off the main driveway and stacked the bales in a pyramid, then we tarped the bloody heck out of them and tied the tarps tight.

We broke into one of the new bales a couple days ago, and the cows are crazy for it. In fact, just tonight Maggie didn't even want her usual evening grain. She wanted hay.

This is yet another example of what we're doing to batten down the hatches for winter. Now we have plenty of feed inside the barn to last all during the cold and snowy months, and enough tarped in the driveway to get us through the muddy spring months.

Bringing in the hay

About a year and a half ago, we found a good deal on hay. We bought 4.5 tons for a decent price.

This was long before we had our cows, of course, but hay stored under cover does fine for a couple of years (meaning, it doesn't lose much of its nutritional value).

This hay fed our cows all through the winter, but we knew in advance it wouldn't be enough to get them through the lean early-spring time, so we've been keeping an eye out for another good deal.

We found it. A local farmer was selling "okay"-quality hay in 500-lb. round bales. Round bales aren't our first choice, but the price was right, so we bought three tons (12 bales).

The farmer was able to deliver them (which was nice, since we don't have the means to transport a lot of hay), and Don was able to offload the bales from the man's flatbed and place them next to the driveway for the night.

The next day, Don moved the bales. He used tines attached to front of the tractor bucket...

...to stab a bail and hoist it up.

One by one, he transported the bales up the lower driveway to the barn area.

He stacked them neatly in an area heavy with gravel (meaning, good drainage). We anchored one side with a railroad tie to keep the bales from rolling.

The other side has cinder blocks to accomplish this task.

Then, since rain was threatening, we fetched a large tarp and got it over the hay and anchored.

This hay has some discolored spots, but it's not moldy. We can discard any parts that aren't good and feed the cows with the rest.

We didn't store the hay in the barn because, at the moment, we don't have room. Not only do we still have some bales left from our first batch, but the barn was messy and disorganized after a winter of shoving things "temporarily" under cover and then leaving them there. (The totes of Christmas items were still on the floor instead of up in the loft, for example.)

For the last couple days, Don has been cleaning the barn with a vengeance, and it's looking vastly improved. He still has a lot of anonymous totes and crates that even now, four years after moving here, hasn't been sorted. He suspects most of it is junk and will get discarded, but of course he needs to go through them all to confirm.

At any rate, this hay will last us well into the warm months when the grass in our pasture will be tall enough to let the cows graze without supplementing.

In all our years of rural living, raising and baling our own hay is one thing we've never been able to do. We've never had the acreage, the equipment, or the money. We accept this limitation and know that purchasing hay is just one of the things we'll have to do each year.

Additionally, this is one of the few planned purchases we had in mind following my job loss and our subsequent financial "tightening of the belt." Under no circumstances would we ever allow our animals to suffer.

Hay today, cows tomorrow?

Summer is slipping away from us, and it doesn't look like we'll manage to get cows this fall. However that doesn't mean we're not planning for them.

Now that the barn is vastly cleared out after our humongous yard sale, we've got room to move around.

And one of the first things we did was move in some hay. That's because we happened to see a local listing for small(ish) bales (80 lbs.) in a small(ish) quantity (4.5 tons). Because the price was right and the quality was good, we snapped it up. Here it's stacked on the seller's trailer in his barn.

For a reasonable fee, the seller delivered it. Here he's backing the trailer up the lower driveway...

...watched intently by Mr. Darcy.

The seller unhitched the trailer and left it at our place so we could unload it over the span of a few days.

Unfortunately this span coincided with the days we held the yard sale, making for a very divided focus. What it meant was Don and I started unloading it in the evenings, when the heat was still sizzling and we were tired already.

The first thing Don did was mark the floor in the barn, leaving spaces to move around the bales.

We started by loading the bales onto the tines of  the tractor to transport them into the barn...

...and quickly discovered a hydraulic leak.

Right. So much for unloading and stacking the bales quickly and efficiently. With the yard sale going on and with the seller coming back for his trailer on Sunday afternoon, we had no option except to tumble, shove, and push the bales off the trailer willy-nilly. No rain was predicted, and the only thing we had to make sure was that the seller could pull his trailer out unimpeded.

After the yard sale was over, and since no rain was predicted, we were able to move the bales into the barn at leisure, working just in the cooler morning hours. We used hand trucks to cart the bales in. When the stacks got too high, Don rigged up skids so we could shove them higher. I don't know why, but 80-pound bales weigh more than they used to when we were 20 years younger.

Days went by, and either separately or together, we moved a few bales at a time into the barn, stacking them higher and higher. Temps at this point were still in the high 90s and low 100s, so we didn't kill ourselves to get everything indoors.

But finally the day came when rain did threaten, so we made a final push and just got everything under cover, mostly by leaning the bales vertically in long lines. Hey, it's temporary.

We're still stacking – quite a number of bales are still leaning in vertical lines against the main pile, blocking usable space – but we'll get it done in time. We need this load of hay to have the smallest possible footprint on the barn floor, since we are keeping an eye out to purchase another two or three tons.

No, we don't have cows ... yet. Among much else, we still have to fence the property and build the barn infrastructure (feed boxes, milking stall, calf pen) to support them. With everything else we're working on, that's why we may not get animals before winter.

But wow, is it nice to see hay in the barn again.

Livin' the dream

A couple weeks ago I walked out to the garden to pick some onions for dinner.

On the way I passed our cow Victoria. We had sold her six-month-old calf a few days before, so she was still in the agitated bellowing stage and was using it as an excuse to hop a low spot in the fence and hang around in the driveway. We kept the driveway gate closed, so there was no where else she could go. (She calmed down shortly thereafter and we repaired the fence.)

At the time, the driveway was littered with eight round bales of hay we had delivered to supplement our winter supply. We've since moved the bales into the barn.

I also passed the buff hen, busy mothering the 13 half-grown chicks.

I picked the onions and trimmed the roots and stems, which I dropped in the compost bin before I came back to the house. While I was in the garden, some neighbors dropped by for a visit. "Look at the size of these!" I exclaimed, holding up the onions, which they duly admired.

"And it occurred to me," I added, "how strange it would seem to some people to be passing cows and chickens and hay bales on the way to get onions from the garden for dinner."

"Yep, we're living the dream," replied the wife.

She was right. Sometimes I forget we're livin' the dream and it's good to be reminded.

Hay day

We have a neighbor who keeps both horses and cattle, and at this time of year he's always on the lookout for Good Deals in hay. He's one of those people who simply knows everyone, and so Good Deals are likely to come down through the grapevine to him before almost anyone else. Such was the case this year when he scored round bales of bluegrass for $55/ton, an incredible price.

We just sold off two six-month-old calves, so we're down the seven animals we'll be over-wintering. In years past we've had as many as 23 animals (way too many for our acreage) and needed a proportionately high amount of hay, but this year we won't need nearly as much. In fact we have several tons of leftover hay in the barn -- it will be fine for another year of feeding -- and just wanted to supplement our supply with another three tons or so. Our neighbor, who was engaged in hauling hay for his own animals, agreed to haul three extra tons for us as well.

He pulled in yesterday with his gooseneck trailer loaded up. This fellow is a former long-haul trucker and we have never, but never, seen anyone more talented in backing trailers and maneuvering huge rigs in tight spaces.

These bales are comparatively lightweight at about 800 lbs. each. Don shoved most of them off the flatbed with the tractor.

The last few bales were too far over for Don to reach with the tractor bucket, so the three of us -- Don, myself, and our neighbor -- climbed onto the flatbed where we heaved-to and rolled the remaining bales onto the ground.

We have some cleanup work to do in the barn before we can put these round bales under cover, but rain is not expected anytime soon so they'll do just fine waiting outside until then.

And meanwhile, it's an awfully nice feeling to have our winter feed taken care of, thanks to our neighbor's help.

First step toward winter

Here in North Idaho, winter is never far from anyone's minds, no matter how hot it is (and right now we're gasping in the low to mid-90s). Yesterday we took the first step toward winter preps by getting our hay in.

We have a neighbor who always keeps an eye out for a good deal on hay. This year he found some bluegrass for a very affordable price, so we ordered 15 tons. The driver was able to fit 24 bales (12 tons) on the truck at a time, and we'll pick up the remaining three tons ourselves.

So all day Thursday we cleared the landing in front of the barn, and cleaned up the barn as well to make room. At 9 am precisely yesterday morning, the truck rumbled up with our hay.

It only took the driver about a 12-point turn to get his rig turned around in the landing with the back facing the barn. Okay, maybe it was a 16-point turn.

Don had borrowed a neighbor's tractor with a lot more oomph than ours -- it's capable of lifting 1000-lb. bales easily, plus it has tines -- and he handled it like a pro. Since we're only getting 15 tons this year (as opposed to last year's 30 tons), he only stacked them three high, instead of four high. We still have two tons left over from last winter, plus we're butchering three more animals this fall, so we'll only go into winter with six cows to feed (and a horse). (In case you're wondering, the animals we'll keep are Matilda and her yearling steer calf Sean, Amy and her yearling steer calf Armour, and Polly with her yearling heifer calf Pixie).

While Don was stacking hay, I checked on a hen I knew was setting in a corner by the older hay bales, and made an interesting discovery. Two hens are setting on the same nest. What, ladies, there isn't enough room around here for separate nests?

I tell ya, I've never seen a breed more likely to go broody than these Jersey Giants. I have no idea how many eggs are under them, nor do I have any clue how they'll sort out whatever chicks hatch, but I figure that's their business.

After unloading the first six bales, Don learned the easiest thing to do was get on the other side of the truck and shove the bales down.

Here's what it looked like from the other side:

It's a pretty impressive whomp when thousand-pound bales hit the ground, let me tell you.

You'll notice there's a lot of room behind the bales in the barn. There's a reason for this. We had a bull calf who -- ahem -- came "online" sooner than anticipated, so it seems all the girls are bred and will calve sometime in late January or February. That's a really really lousy time to have babies. However we'll only have a maximum of four calves born, so we'll shuffle everyone into the barn or outside pens to keep them protected from the weather. Matilda and Amy can bunk together (they are mother and daughter) in the pens by the corral, and Polly and Pixie can bunk together here behind the hay bales, where they'll be sheltered from wind and snow. Ah, logistics.

This summer milestone -- getting the hay in -- is one of those "Whew!" feelings of security, knowing we can feed our animals through the winter.