As true a saying as ever there was…
These pictures show three tractors at work. The youngest guy is working the rake, and Hay Guy and another man are driving the balers. The middle of the big field shows the hay all spread out, the young guy is piling it into windrows with the rake and the balers are following him about one circuit behind each other.
I can see they started much earlier this afternoon, since the far field is already baled. In total we’re looking at about 12 acres of hay here. This was taken around 7pm, shortly after I got home from work, they were finished about an hour later. I’m guessing they’ll haul it off the field tomorrow.
This seemed like the right beer to have with dinner this evening.
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I’m fascinated at the variety of ways people put up hay. We use one tractor. (We only have one tractor.) That’s fine because the bottom of the windrow needs a chance to dry once we rake it. And we can’t leave bales on the field…they wick up too much moisture. Crazy.
I think Hay Guy owns 6 tractors, maybe 7. He does contract work of all kinds round here. He doesn’t usually leave the bales, I think he’s having manpower issues. Our mutual friend down the road has 7 tractors. Between them, I’m pretty much covered for tractor work. They both yell at me when I murmur about possibly getting a small tractor for my own use. It’s fun to stir them up sometimes…
We have tractor envy, as ever. We still (and by ‘we’, I really mean my husband) make hay by hand, using a scythe. Of course, we only have a small flock of chickens and garden beds that make use of the hay, so our needs are small. Love your pictures! That beer must have gone down well 🙂
When I was a child, we had a Massey Ferguson 35 – I loved that tractor – drove it a lot. But we didn’t have our own hay equipment. Other farmers always came and did the haying. In fact Hay Guy was a boy helper in those days, used to come with one of the farmers and load bales (no auto loaders then) onto the truck or wagon. I rely on him and his buddy up the road a lot for odd jobs, and can’t really justify owning a tractor as long as the two of them are in business.