Posts Tagged ‘good hay’
Nuisance Amounts
So far this winter (even though winter solstice is still nine days away), we have only been receiving what I call nuisance amounts of snowfall. It’s barely enough to justify shoveling, yet too much to leave on steps and walkways. Last week, when Asher and I got caught in that epic snow-burst, we couldn’t see the barn. In the end, so little snow accumulated that it was all gone two days later.
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Yesterday morning, I spent a few minutes clearing the driveway closest to the house with a shovel.
I like having the cleaner pavement, but that minimal covering of snow isn’t enough to deserve firing up the ATV to plow, and I’m not inclined to push the shovel the rest of the length of the driveway to the road. I saw the township plow go by on our road, so I carried a shovel when walking Asher. That big blade didn’t throw up enough snow to make any difference.
I shoveled what little there was anyway. So now the top and the bottom of our driveway are cleared, and the middle is just a series of tire tracks and footprints until we get enough sun to evaporate whatever snow remains.
Since the temperature was forecast to drop precipitously overnight, I made sure the horses had plenty of good hay to stoke their internal furnaces. They are decidedly picky about one of the batches of bales we’ve been trying to use up on them, and they regularly ignore any amount that we mix into the hay nets. I chose to dump some of those dregs out on the ground where we are building a hay path for traction in advance of future icy conditions. That way, I could fill the bag exclusively with hay they prefer.
What’s the first thing that happens?
Mia comes over and starts eating the hay I dumped out.
I don’t blame her. Free of the netting, she can dive in and more easily scrounge out any desired nibbles mixed in with the stringy grasses she doesn’t like. She probably thinks of them as “nuisance amounts.”
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Quality Hay
We received a delivery of new hay on Friday afternoon. Since we are caring for horses for the rescue organization “This Old Horse,” the hay was procured by one of their staff. I don’t believe we have ever received hay twice from the same source in the years we’ve had these horses.
Of the last two batches we’ve received, one was much better described as “straw,” and the other was primarily a hair-like grass blade of little substance. Each time, we believe it will be just fine, but the horses soon demonstrate whether they think it’s good hay or not.
Friday’s batch showed up in a hay wagon, not strapped to a flatbed trailer, and the farmer, Josh, radiated a feel-good energy that both Cyndie and I perceived. These were promising first impressions.
Johanne told us this was organic hay because the field where it was grown is leased from a farmer who operates under completely “organic” principles. Works for us.
We tossed and restacked 150 bales from the hay wagon to the shed, and I didn’t notice a single bale that looked odd. One thing Cyndie and I have learned over the years is that our impression of hay being “good” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if the horses don’t like it. That would prove to be the ultimate test.
Once the wagon was empty, we swept up a full wheelbarrow of loose scraps that had fallen from bales. Cyndie then included a mix of those scraps along with the old hay in the nets she topped off when we served up the horses’ evening feed buckets.
When I checked on the horses later, I found them all feeding on the hay bags even though they hadn’t finished the grain in their buckets.
They must have smelled it and couldn’t resist. They obviously liked it!
I’ve written before about how much incidental grass grows in the packed gravel driveway where hay scraps fall in front of the hay shed. I couldn’t get grass to grow there if I tried, but doing nothing resulted in more turf than gravel.
That gave me an idea. In October, I added compost fill to the slope of our new lookout knoll to cover the barren, sandy edge of the slope and, ultimately, improve it to become a mowable grade.
We were planning to plant grass seeds on the improved slope in the spring, but why wait? Cyndie raked up as much of the leftover hay scraps as possible from the ground where the hay wagon had parked. Logically, much of the grass seed probably stayed behind to thicken the grass already growing there, but any fraction remaining is now moved to the lookout knoll.
We’ll still probably toss more seeds on the slope in the spring, but it feels like we are helping nature to work with us a little bit by covering the surface with hay scraps.
Especially since the horses are showing us that it’s good quality hay.
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Relative Something 