Post by genebo on May 25, 2015 23:38:49 GMT
I just finished another pair of fields for one of my neighbors. They are city folk, with full time jobs who have bought the farm well before retirement.
They don't farm, though. They want their land kept neat and clean looking. That is where I come in. I cut, rake and bale their fields in exchange for all of the hay that comes off of it.
This farm, like the others I bale, used to be working hay fields, but were abandoned years ago, before the current owners got them. The core grass varieties are good hay grasses, but includes everything else native to the area. Some good, some not so good. The first cuttings are the best, filled with more grasses and less weeds and wild stuff.
This year is a bounty year. An early spring shot the cool season grasses up well ahead of the warm weather weeds. It makes nice hay.
I bale it in small square bales that weigh about 35 to 40 pounds each. Easy for me to handle and stack, just the right size for my Dexters to clean up one bale at a feeding.
Every time I bale I get more hay than I care to haul and stack and sometimes more than I have room for. That's what got me started to offering all the bales I don't want to needy farmers for $1 per bale if they pick them up out of the field. Hey, if I wanted to haul and stack them, I'd keep them.
I keep a list of people who have need for hay. The lady who tries to make money for some pretty clothes for her daughters by raising goats to milk and sell. The lady who bought two rescue horses from the sheriff's auction of starving horses, only to have her husband die. The man who was so badly injured in a car wreck that the only thing he can do to earn money is to raise some feeder calves each year. The more hay he gets, the more calves he can raise.
This time I called an old friend who had once bought ducks from me. I found out that she had acquired 3 cows and 2 horses from a rescue operation. The cows were to provide raw milk for an ailment she suffers from that is eased by drinking raw milk. She and her husband came to the fields with a 16' long flat trailer and a standard pick-up truck. We talked a bit and instead of splitting the first field with them I would sell them all the hay from the first field. I would be satisfied with the hay from the second field. I helped them get started loading, then went to baling the second field. When I was just finishing baling it, here they came on foot. They wanted me to see their load before they left. They also had cash, $1 per bale, in hand. They had managed the most incredible stacking job I have ever seen in order to get every bale out of that first field: 172 of them. The geometric precision of the stacking job!
They wanted to know what they could do to help me get mine picked up and taken home. I told them, "Thanks, but no thanks." I was too tired to do it. I would do that the next morning.
I asked them to look at the last hay I had baled, from the shady section of the 2nd field. The hay from there never cures properly and this was no exeption. It looks alright, but the moisture is too high and it will mold or mildew before winter is out. I offered it give it to them if they had any animals that were eating hay right now. The hay needs to be eaten before it goes bad. They have some goats that are eating hay. They said they could use it. The lady said she'd have to pass, though, because they didn't have any more money and wouldn't get any more for a while. I cleared up what I said, that I would give them the hay if they would take it. She said she would, but only if they were allowed to come help haul and stack my hay. We made a date to meet bak in the field next morning.
I got their first next morning, and had 52 bales loaded into my trailer by the time they arrived. They immediately started filling their truck with my bales. They didn't bring the trailer today. They got 42 bales on the truck with his precise stacking, then they followed me home. I decided to stack his truckload first, so they could go. I started the generator that runs the hay elevator. He went into the barn loft and she got up in the truck. She would hand me a bale, I would put it on the elevator and he would stack it. The truck was empty and the bales were stacked in the loft in short time. He pulled his truck out and I backed my trailer in. They wouldn't go. They wanted to stay and help. We finished my trailer load almost as quickly. Then we went back to the field, where I loaded the few remaining good bales into my trailer while they loaded the poor bales into their truck. We went back to finish stacking my bales, but as soon as we started, the elevator broke. They finally agreed to go on home, I could finish by myself.
They are such a hard-working couple. Like the farm folk I grew up with in my youth. It came as a shock to learn that they both had pursued very technical careers and neither had ever worked a farm before. The lady says that it is the hard work on the farm that is keeping her going, that with idleness, her condition would take her over.
I discovered that she first got goats to milk, because she thought that she couldn't drink cow's milk at all. Didn't like it that well, though. That's why they got the rescue cattle, was to try raw cow's milk. One of her cows is a holstein and the other is a Guernsey. She says that neither one makes her sick to drink raw, but the Guernsey milk causes no trouble at all! She has quit milking the Holstein and is only milking the Guernsey.
Would anybody dare to guess why she can drink raw Guernsey milk but not raw Holstein milk?
I fixed the hay elevator and Babe came to load while I stacked. When I went up into the loft I got my first look at the stacking job he had done. Incredible! I hated to cover it up with my own work. I don't have a clue how he wedged each bale into place with such precision!
I surely have some good friends in this world!
