Hay, Jude!

Hay season has arrived! Farmer Dan baled his hay, and said I could have some for free, since my goats have been clearing his farm graveyard. We went over yesterday afternoon to pick it up. It's a good thing we waited, since it had rained that morning, and all the hay in the field was wet. Sitting in the sun all day helped to dry it.

Usually, it's blisteringly hot when we do hay, but yesterday was relatively cool and a little overcast. It doesn't feel cool when you're throwing fifty pound hay bales around, though! My son is still here, and his poor friend came over to hang out with him just in time to get roped into helping with the hay. This kid has been doing hay since he weighed as much as a hay bale, so he's the perfect helper.

We took just over fifty bales to our house. This part of the field wasn't the best hay, and it's okay to feed it to my milkers during the summer and fall when they have stuff to eat outside, but since I will be breeding at least one of them this fall, I want the good stuff for the pregnant mama. That will come in a few weeks when Farmer Dan does his other field.

Our hay loft is a bit of a pain to load hay into, since we don't have a hay elevator. That's on my wishful thinking shopping list. Our super hay helper can throw bales from the floor into the hay loft in one go, though, so as long as he's around to help, we will manage it. My son was catching them and moving them toward the back of the loft, and since I am the smallest, my job was to stack them, which involves crawling around on top of the bales, hunched against the roof, trying to get the bales into the smallest space possible. Since they got rained on in the morning (not a very hard rain), I salted them as I stacked. Spreading rock salt between layers draws the moisture out of them, and helps prevent mold, which renders them inedible, or fire, which is obviously catastrophic. Wet hay can begin to compost, which creates heat, and if the conditions are just right, it can actually spontaneously combust. Lesson: Wet hay bad, dry hay good!

The goats have to be locked out of the barn during this operation, which drives them crazy. They can see the hay coming up the hill and going into the barn, and they know quite well what's going on, but they can't eat any of it!

After we unloaded the first batch into our barn, we went back and loaded the rest of the hay onto the trailer to be moved to the brush goat hay barn. It was getting pretty late by this point, and the weather was looking ominous. In spite of the fact that I was driving a big truck and hauling a long hay trailer, I had to stop and get some weather pictures on the way back out to the field.

I only managed to get a couple of shots before the sun dipped down below the cloud bank. The clouds had such a sharp line that it almost looks like a mountain range, but the hills are visible below the clouds.

It was pretty spectacular, even if it's not obvious from these hastily snapped pictures, and I'm glad we stopped.

I was getting a little nervous as we drove back out to the field. It was getting late, and the cloud bank, while quite photogenic, looked like it was the death of all the hay, so we rushed to load the last of it onto the trailer.

We left the trailer at the property where the I store the brush goat hay, and tarped it in case of rain. Turns out that was a good call, because I woke up to a misty morning and we would have had to leave the hay out in the air all day to dry if it hadn't been covered.

After chores this morning, I met my magic farm girl, Arlee, and put the rest of the hay into the barn. The brush goats are set for the winter now! It is exhausting and sweaty and itchy work, but it is so satisfying to have a full barn and know that the goats will be fed during the cold months. I finally got a shower to wash the dust and hay bits and sweat off. Now I can rest until tomorrow, when I will have to go clip a bunch of blackberry canes for the goats, who can't reach anything else.

Sleep well, everyone! I know I will. We will see if I can move my arms tomorrow!