Relative Something

We are on a hay quest. I know Cyndie has dabbled at this, off and on, beginning more than two years ago when we began thinking about how many acres we would need to support 4 horses. Now it is crunch time, and we are both realizing we probably could have done more toward this aspect of owning horses.

I admit to not paying much attention to this detail. Having no experience whatsoever, I gladly deferred to Cyndie’s efforts toward figuring it all out. She is a voracious reader and I frequently found her delving into research on all things hay-related. She also has a lot of first-hand experience with feeding horses, and she has contact with friends who buy hay for horses. It made sense to me to have her take the lead on this issue.

She knew all along that this was an important detail that we needed to address, but a simple solution has continued to elude us. Now, finding a source for hay has become the final step we would like to accomplish before bringing horses here. Everything else is pretty much ready. (I still have some areas of turf, dirt and roots in one paddock that need to be smoothed out.)

In the final hour, we are not only finding that hay is incredibly expensive right now, but we are finding that there is hardly any available to be purchased.

It has greatly increased the incentive to rev up our efforts toward growing our own, and growing as much as we possibly can. We have gone back and forth, several times, over what the best use of our fields would be for us. We don’t have the equipment, or the knowledge required, to cut and bail hay (yet), so we have mostly considered buying from others and using our land for grazing. Now, for the immediate future, our focus is shifting toward finding someone who is willing to come to our property and cut/bale what we grow.

That’s the next challenge. What is growing here currently is sub-par. It needs to have weed killer applied and then be reseeded. We tried to get this to happen this summer, but accomplishing it on the scale we need has proved just beyond our reach. Now we are pretty much out of time for this growing season.

Given the high cost and limited availability of hay, we will be looking to become masters of growing the best horse hay possible on our land. Good horse hay is basically grass. Imagine that! After all the years I have endeavored to eliminate areas of grass that need to be mowed. Now I will be finding a way to grow the most grass possible. One of the first steps will be cutting down the high weeds in the area to the north of our driveway in attempt to convert that to good grass, probably for grazing, but maybe even cutting for hay in the future.

Who would ever have guessed? I am cutting wild areas to turn them into spaces where we will be growing more grass. It feels like a practical joke from the universe, or something.