{"id":2236,"date":"2012-06-18T17:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T21:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=2236"},"modified":"2012-06-18T15:09:26","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T19:09:26","slug":"why-hay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/06\/18\/why-hay\/","title":{"rendered":"Why hay?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pierre Nzuah, our sort-of son from Cameroon, bringing in a wagonload.<\/p><\/div>\n

Someone asked me this last week, “Why do you hay?”<\/p>\n

To feed our sheep. For the majority of farmers in the north country, haying feeds dairy and beef livestock, particularly through the winter. But, there’s another reason: to keep agricultural land agricultural. Lots of people care about “local” food these days. Local food takes land. Think about what it took to clear and maintain those hay fields and croplands over the years. I hate seeing hay fields growing back up to brush just as I hate seeing old barns caving in.<\/p>\n

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Hay cocks in the field.<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve spent some part of most every summer for the past 40 years “making hay.”\u00a0 I’ve done loose hay, much as my Amish neighbors still handle hay, raking cut grass into windrows, then using a hand hay fork to create hay cocks (read this<\/a> excerpt from “The Book of the Farm” by Henry Stephens for more on low-tech hay-making).\u00a0 Hay cocks, or windrows run through a hayloader,\u00a0 are\u00a0 loaded onto a flat hay wagon and then, ideally, lifted by a pulley-operated hay fork running along the ceiling of the hay mow (pronounced to rhyme with cow) and placed in the mow for storage, wagon-load by wagon-load. (By mid-winter, a sharp hay knife, like a machete, is needed to cut chunks of hay out to feed animals.) We never had an operational hay lifter, so lots of handling from field to barn.<\/p>\n

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Loose hay being hand-loaded onto a wagon.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here’s what it looks like for us nowadays.<\/p>\n

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Empty wagon. Getting ready to bale.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Bill and our friend David doing what every farmer has to do: field repairs to equipment. Here, the baler threw a chain. Pierre observes. I wait for the farmer mechanic to get things up and running again so I can continue to bale.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Bill brings a load down from the hay field.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Getting ready to mow away a wagon-load.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Here's who eats the hay. A group of our sheep heading home to the barn. Pierre's bringing up the rear on his bike; Leda is trying to act like a Border Collie (sometimes yes, sometimes no).<\/p><\/div>\n

Most large farmers round bale their hay, or make “haylage”–chopped hay which can be stored in concrete silos and mixed with other feed. Here’s a neighbor’s place this morning: large trucks will carry away chopped haylage.<\/p>\n

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Everyone has seen round bales on the landscape. These must be moved with a tractor. They may be stored under cover or wrapped in white plastic to diminish spoilage. Here’s a video of round bales being made…watch the runaway bale, it’s cool.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

How do you hay? Or, if you have questions about haying, perhaps some farmers out there will help with answers.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone asked me this last week, “Why do you hay?”
\nTo feed our sheep. For the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1420,6300],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2255,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions\/2255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}