Posts Tagged ‘hay’
Moving Hay
When we moved to the country twelve and a half years ago, there was a lot that I didn’t have a clue how to do. After a career in manufacturing, you’d think I would have a better perspective on inventory management, but I struggled a little bit in figuring out how to manage turning over our firewood and bales of hay.
“First in; first out” (FIFO) is a classic method of using the oldest inventory first. That can be a trick to do when stacking your wood or hay in storage. The oldest ends up at the bottom of the pile.
For our firewood, I quickly changed from stacking it horizontally across the width of the shed to short rows, back to front. I just use the rows up from right to left and stack new wood behind them as space opens up.
That method doesn’t work for our hay. Since the bales arrive in large numbers all at once, we fill up the hay shed, and the last bales stacked become the first bales used. The routine I’ve settled on requires that we use up almost all of the last delivery before ordering more, which gets a little nerve-wracking since we don’t have complete control over when the next delivery can happen or how fast the horses will be burning through bales any given week.
When we do get close and the delivery is scheduled, I then hustle to move the last of the old bales out of the way in the shed and stage them in the barn. That is what I worked on yesterday, moving the last 21 bales from the hay shed to the barn.
The chance to meet our new handler, Jeremy from This Old Horse, ended up getting postponed yesterday afternoon. However, while I was hauling hay bales, I received a call from a contractor who wanted to come out this afternoon to talk about helping me put up a shade sail. I anticipate it will be a challenge to get a firm quote since there are so many unknowns at this point, but at a minimum, I hope to gauge a level of interest, knowledge, and ability for the project as I imagine it.
I’m expecting new hay to be delivered on Sunday, and if all goes as planned, I hope to meet Jeremy at the same time. It would be great to have another person to help toss bales into the shed for stacking.
It feels like a lot is happening here while Cyndie is in Florida. Of course, yesterday morning, before she left, Cyndie baked oatmeal raisin cookies for me to give the folks stopping by.
The more I give away, the fewer there will be for me to resist eating. Now, that’s inventory management.
.
.
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.
.
.
Board Replacement
It’s the second time in a week that I was able to make use of old deck boards that I saved after we refinished the deck however many years ago. The floorboards on Cyndie’s prized face-to-face wooden swing have seriously rotted so yesterday we replaced them.
She plans to apply a much-needed water sealant to see if we can’t extend the life of the swing for a few more seasons.
On the edge of the woods we put our lives at risk to complete this job because of the mosquitos. Teeny, tiny, or full-sized, they show up in droves. They find their way behind our eyeglasses and into our ears. Bites on my neck and the backs of my arms. I can’t tell if the itch is from an old bite or one currently happening. It sure hampers the experience of forest bathing.
In addition to getting several deluges of rain last week, we had days when the dew point reading matched the air temperature. That spells 100% humidity. The level of wetness around here is worthy of April more than a normal July. That would be, an April after a snowy winter. We just had an almost snowless winter and still the amount of standing water in low areas has been consistent for the last four months.
The mosquitos have never had it so good. We have come a long way since last year’s drought conditions.
Of course, this is all making the grass grow like it’s the first greening of spring. Two days after mowing, it looks like it’s already overdue for another cut.
The recent rains have foiled the baling of the hay that finally got cut in our field. Word is they hope to try for Thursday, weather permitting. What a difficult year to be a hay farmer. We just received a fresh batch of small squares of grass hay for our horses from a new supplier. They shared a lot of horror stories about how business has been for them so far this year.
They describe battling both the weather and difficult “clients.” Cyndie and I did our best to not find ourselves being labeled as difficult. It isn’t that hard since Cyndie gifted them some lemonade cake right as they arrived.
Food is one of the big ways she shows her love. Last night while dinner was heating, she baked a peach tart that became a peach crisp with the sweet crumble topping she ended up adding.
I definitely feel loved.
.
.
Looking Close
I woke early yesterday and snuck out the door in the dark while Asher was still in his overnight crate. My destination was the Subaru Dealership in the Cities where I bought my 2019 Crosstrek. It’s headed for the 80K mile mark soon and still had the original tires, or what was left of ‘em, anyway.
Today it has fresh tires, brakes, oil, and an air filter. It’s almost like a brand-new car.
Cyndie called in one of our pet sitters to take care of the dog and horses in my absence. It was like having a day off for me. Well, half a day. Upon my arrival home, Asher instantly wanted to rough-house and battle for his squeaky ball. Eventually, we headed out to feed the horses.
The barn was in perfect order. The only difference between the way I do things in the morning and the way our helper left it was a closed door where we usually leave the top half open during the day.
I found myself taking close-up photos while waiting for the horses to eat everything in their feed pans.
The wind was whipping up some ripples on the surface of the waterer.
Close inspection of some of the hay that was delivered to us last season reveals a lot of woody stems and a very bleached coloring. We’ve been mixing it with partial flakes from 30 bales we received from a different supplier. I’m guessing the difference is first-cut versus second or third-cut.
The horses are very skilled at not eating any hay they don’t like.
It’s a lot more like straw than hay. The horses just let it drop to the ground.
This morning, Asher gets a car ride to Hudson for a day of play with other canines. It’ll almost be like another day off for me, except I’ll be picking up Cyndie’s grocery order and hauling it into the house.
The latest update on Cyndie’s convalescence is all good one week after surgery. Maybe even ahead of schedule for what she was originally expecting. The swelling is under control and she is already moving around using only one crutch while controlling pain with nothing but over-the-counter acetaminophen.
She is doing well to keep herself at rest and icing and elevating her ankle regularly.
I’m hoping she will be able to get back in the action by the playoffs. Whoops. I mixed her surgery up with all the injuries happening in the NFL. Between concussions and ruptured Achilles, it seems like there is a risk of teams not being able to field enough backup players.
Here’s hoping Asher doesn’t pull a muscle racing around with other dogs on his play date today.
.
.
Hay There
We woke up to an icy coating yesterday that ranked in the top 4 slipperiest conditions we’ve dealt with since moving here. The saving grace was how quickly the temperature warmed to a level where everything softened and footing was a little less treacherous. I needed to transfer some hay from the hay shed to the barn but decided it could wait until it wasn’t so slippery.
Our hay stores are down to a little under half the total amount delivered last year.
I’m hoping we won’t need another delivery until after the snow melts because the plowed mountains around the turns won’t accommodate the poor turning radius of our hay guy’s lengthy truck and goose-neck trailer.
In the early afternoon, I moved three bales per trip from the shed to the barn under the watchful eyes of the horses. Mix seemed to be counting the bales as I rolled back and forth. Maybe they were just looking to see if I’d slip.
Twelve bales in the barn is a number that works to keep me from feeling like I’m constantly making this transfer. Any more and the stack would be over my head.
While filling hay nets a few days ago, I felt a wave of summer memories as I pulled flakes off a bale. I pondered about what the field was like where this grass had grown and how hot it was when they were raking and baling this hay.
I wonder if the horses can tell the difference between bales from different parts of the hay field as they chomp bite-fulls through the nets or from the hay boxes. They certainly know when a bite is good to eat or deserves to be dropped to the ground.
Hopefully, they are sensing the solar energy stored in the dried blades of grass. Maybe that contributes to how horses eating hay helps keep them warm when the weather is cold. They are eating that echo of warmth from back in the hot summer days when the hay was baled.
There must be something to it. I tend to get warmer when I’m breaking open bales and stuffing flakes into net bags, one after another.
.
.
Summer Progress
The last few days have felt very much like classic summer days. I guess it is right on schedule as we now find ourselves in the Independence Day holiday weekend. Cyndie headed up to the lake with her mom yesterday and I stayed home to tend to our animals. We weren’t successful in securing coverage allowing us both to be away over the 4th of July weekend this year.
One classic sign of summer for us is the sight of our field converted into hay bales.
This year, Brad, who grazes cattle on our neighbor’s land, had his guy cut our hay field when cutting fields adjacent to us. A win-win for everyone as we wanted our field cut and hoped someone could use the hay, it was conveniently located for them to cut and bale, and it gives Brad a little more hay supply than he would have otherwise had.
Meanwhile, our horses have the back pasture for grazing. Yesterday evening, Delilah and I wandered out into the pasture to pull some weeds and the herd showed up to munch nearby.
The sound of the methodical biting of mouthfuls of grass as the horses torque their heads to break the blades and chew is a wonderful summer soundtrack backed up with songbirds, and the calls of frogs and crickets. It provides a soothing, meditative mood that nurtures my soul.
In contrast, serving up pans of manufactured nutritional feed pellets in the dry, dusty surface under the barn overhang can be a little irritating when things don’t go smoothly. I wish I didn’t so frequently find fault with the conditions as being either too wet and muddy or too dry and dusty. The days between those two states are way too few.
Since we allow the horses some autonomy –usually temporarily separating them into two groups of two– they are able to wander over and check out what the other horse was served, triggering a back and forth movement that foils the soothing sounds of contented munching we so enjoy.
Of the four horses, Light is the most prone to stepping into her feed pan, often tipping it rapidly and spilling the contents. In attempt to avoid them trying to eat the spillage out of the sand, which is not good for their gut, we have tried serving Light’s pan on a rubber mat.
I think we’re gonna need to use a bigger mat.
.
.
Counting Bales
The way I view it, managing the inventory of hay bales to feed horses is an imprecise science. Whether guided toward serving sizes by weight or “flakes” from the bale, there is widely varying uniformity of both and an uncertain outcome of which horse will eat it and when they do, how much they will consume. Horses we’ve had all seem content to spill and waste as much as they actually eat.
I was once told that if horses get hungry enough, they will eat whatever is served. Given that ours are recovering from a variety of levels of neglect, we’d rather not put them in that level of desperation. Not sharing the same sense of smell as a horse leaves me wondering when they are ignoring a serving because they don’t like the smell.
Cyndie is much quicker than me to declare a bale as “bad” because it is musty, moldy or smells dusty. That hay gets tossed for some other purpose, usually, landfill somewhere on our property.
All that makes it hard for me to judge if we have enough or how urgently we need to bring more in. Today we are basing it on the space we have for storage. As the stock in our hay shed has dropped to a single layer, we have put in the call for another delivery.
Of course, in order to reduce it to one layer, I needed to move 42 bales into the barn. I also ended up rearranging the scrap lumber stored on the right side of the hay shed to create more space for stacking new bales.
The floor of the hay shed is dirt and we put down pallets under the bottom layer of bales, hoping some air beneath them will reduce mold development. It doesn’t really work. As we ended up doing in the past, we’ve decided to leave the bottom layer of old musty bales in place this time and stack the new incoming bales on top of them.
It’s a treat that we don’t need to do the work of lifting and hauling the hundreds of new bales that will be arriving but it is not lost on me that I will be lifting and stacking them all five-high in the shed.
Yesterday was just a warmup for a much bigger upper body workout to come. Hopefully, these bales will all smell perfect to Cyndie and the horses.
.
.
Really Dry
There are places suffering a lot worse drought consequences than we are, but the impact of our moderate drought conditions right now are noticeable all around our property. In the nine years that we have lived here, I have only seen it approach this level of dryness one other time.
It gets a little nerve-wracking owning large animals when grazing land begins to dry up. So far, I’d say we have been pretty lucky. Our hay shed is stacked high with bales and our fields have plenty of growth left from May that the horses have only lightly grazed.
We are still hoping the neighbor farmer who previously rented our fields to grow hay will cut and bale the hayfield soon. The horses barely put a dent in the growth out there and it’s long past ready for cutting. I assume it has increased value to him given conditions, but his delay tending to the task has us wondering. (We just learned his equipment broke down but he’s got it fixed and hopes to make it out later today.)
I feel really lucky that so much of our surroundings are staying as green as they are. Out of the roughly 4 acres of grass I mow, only two spots have dried up to a dead-brown-looking crisp.
We do not water the grass around the house and both front and back are faring really well considering.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I think a lot of it has to do with the surrounding shade that keeps the ground from baking as severely as open areas.
Now if the trees can just hold out long enough to outlast the dryness, the rest of our land might get by just fine.
.
.
Hay Delivered
One of the best parts of our relationship with This Old Horse is that they provide all the support needed to care for the horses, and the greatest relief for us is that we don’t have to find and transport baled hay. Yesterday was magical in that a trailer full of small squares was delivered right to our hay-shed door.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Since I was conveniently an hour away at the day-job when it arrived, the work of helping to unload and re-stack it in the shed landed on Cyndie. [monotone fake concern…] Too bad I wasn’t able to be there.
Despite the fact it was wintery-cold outside, all I wanted to do when I got home was go hang out with the horses. They were out on the back pasture, so Cyndie and I picked the chore of clearing out two years of overgrowth from within, and around the outside perimeter of the round pen. We were standing where the horses could clearly see us.
Our previous herd would quickly move their grazing to get very near wherever we happened to be, but these mares are much less connected to people at this point. They randomly appear to adjust their positioning with respect to us, though it usually involves maintaining a distance that reflects their understandable caution.
We look forward to showing them plenty of reasons to develop a special connection with us over time, starting with the fact we will be the primary ones serving up their rations of hay.
.
.
Just Clinging
We have arrived at the week with the earliest sunrise in our location and the weather is at its most wonderful summer-est. Our doors and windows are open and the ceiling fans are turning, yet the warmth hovers around the edge of too much. Tank tops and loose shorts, bare feet and a tall glass of ice water put things right.
The cut hay in our fields was raked and round-baled on the same afternoon yesterday. If you look close, Cyndie captured a lone deer crossing the image view as the field became draped in the shadow that was replacing the disappearing sunlight.
For as much as we are forbidden to wrap our arms around our fellow friends and family, we are striving to wrap the summer up in a grandiose hug of epic proportions. Despite the chaos of a political circus, a global pandemic continuing its invisible spread, and citizens bellowing for justice against centuries of systemic racism against indigenous peoples, immigrants, and the entire spectrum of non-white human beings, I am just clinging to the precious moment of a few glorious quintessential summer days for their faint distraction of nature at its finest.
We are doing so without a rambunctious picnic of music and food and a hundred of our favorite people. I am doing so without my annual week of biking and camping somewhere around Minnesota with hundreds of friends and brilliant like-minded adventurers. We are doing so without concerts enjoyed among thousands of similar music-loving fans or sports competitions with hoards of supporters cheering on the efforts of athletes at every level of skill.
There will be no county fairs and ultimately, no Minnesota State Fair. Graduations have already been morphed into sometimes blessedly shorter shadows of the usual pomp and circumstance, and weddings and funerals constrained to unrecognizable whispers of the emotional extravagance they deserve.
Navigating the days that turn to weeks and then months of the COVID-19 pandemic is dragging us all into a marathon of paying heed to the best-practice precautions of constraining the spread to manageable levels despite our preference that it just be a short duration fast-walk competition among friends.
My dentist’s office called and left a message that they are now accepting cleaning and checkup appointments scheduled for the fall. My rather feeble home plaque-scraping exercise since my appointment in March was canceled is now going to need to suffice until autumn. Thank goodness I won’t need to waste a beautiful summer afternoon splayed back in the reclined chair getting my teeth cleaned and inspected.
The best medicine I have right now for the pandemonium of current events is the natural summer surroundings of our little paradise. I love it. We love it.
It helps fuel our ability to nurture and grow that love for beaming out into the great big world.
Here is Wintervale LOVE to all who are willing and able to receive it… <muwah>
Cling to that.
.
.
Relative Something 