Hay's the Worst.

A few days ago Art cut the waterways and a few rounds of the big field. Last night, after work, we started baling, beginning with the big field (because that's the good stuff), then the waterways, and then the back pasture. Our field is shaped like an 'L', the big field being the long part and the shorter part in the back behind the barn. This is the area that consistently makes junk hay. By the time we got to baling it last night, the dew had set in making the already borderline damp hay even more wet. We started baling it but because the grass is so stringy and wet it clogged up the baler and we spent a good 20 minutes unclogging it. The bales were extremely heavy at about 120 lbs making it hard for even Art to lift them. At this point I told Art we should just leave it since we were in a hurry to get it done because they were calling for rain all day Thursday and Friday. He said that since it was going to rain and it was already raked, he just couldn't leave it because then it would be junk. I told him that it was already wet and if we baled it, the hay would be junk anyway. So either way the hay is junk- but my option created a lot less work and headache. But no, we baled it. We finished baling about 9:30 (both of us quite hungry and crabby) and then had to figure out what to do with the two loads- we were out of storage space (that being taken up by another wagon of the last crop of hay) so we had to drag two large (and quite heavy) tarps over the top of the wagons, held down by some of the junk hay we baled. Of course it didn't rain last night but if we hadn't covered the wagons, surely it would have.

By this time it was 10:30 and I hadn't eaten yet. I was hungry and it was waaay past my bedtime. I told Art that never again will I bale that back part. It never dries right and it stresses me out and makes me an evil person. So to save our relationship, I won't do it. To my surprise, Art was ok with that.

Oh! And apparently in the next year or two we will have to rotate or re-seed. Art's thinking about planting corn. The only draw back to this is the pesticides/herbicides we would have to use- there's no way in hell I'm weeding seven acres. But to have a year of not worrying about hay, it just might be worth it.