9/25/08

The 2008 Baling


We have finished baling! Ran a bit late this year, our neighbor farmer told us waiting to bale after the first of september wasn't such a great idea, the weather isn't very reliable he said. But never the less, we were blessed with a week of perfect baling weather!
In the past we've done large round bales, but then whenever we wanted to put one out for the animals, we had to get the help of our other neighbor farmer to haul it out there with his tractor. So this year someone had the idea of making square bales (really, they look like rectangles to me) Well, we have this little stream that run through the southern pasture, and that made it impossible to get the large bale wagon thing up there to the north pasture, so instead we hauled all 250 bales in 6 separate loads on a little 5'x10' trailer. Let me remind you that each bale does weigh over 50lbs. That was saturday, and now, on thursday, I think I can finely say my back is no longer aching. I'm just glad that it was decided to quit at 250 and make the rest of the hay into the larger bales, I guess we made about 50 of them, so if we had done it all in the smaller bales, we'd probably still be out there, and I think, I might have dropped dead from exhaustion.
But! It is done, and now they are all tucked inside the loft of our white barn, and we will be able to easily break one open for the animals anytime we need to this winter.
Plus, they're fun to climb on as you might have noticed.