Make Hay While the Sun Shines

The warm sunny weather has made the farmers busy. This week our farm has been busy making haylage. This is kind of a cross between wrapped silage and hay. It is not left as moist as silage which is mainly used for cattle but not as dry as hay. We use it mainly to sell for horses but the cattle do eat it too. The field they have been cutting is about a mile from the main farm. I often get the job of taking down extra wrap and string. I went on such a mission and to deliver sandwiches as well. The view as with a lot of our fields is panoramic. We were not the only ones busy as you can see in the cut fields in the distance. I love the pattern that the cut grass makes from a distance.

When I got there the baler had a breakdown and there was still a lot of grass to bale. Kate was however busy with the wrapper. The process involves picking up a bale.

Wrapping it in large sheets of plastic. It is important that the whole bale is covered otherwise it will become fusty.

Then depositing the wrapped bale back on the field. Care has to be taken on a slope that the massive bale does not run away which could be very dangerous.

Then the whole process starts again. When we first got married the farm did not have a wrapper and the bales were slid into massive bags and sealed. One year a neighbouring farmer wrapped them for us and by the next year we had our own wrapper.

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