Baling hay and storing it to feed animals during the winter has to be done during the hottest, driest days of the summer. Why? Because hay can not be wet when it is stacked in the barn. The moisture can cause spontaneous combustion from heat building up in the hay, which is the main cause of barn fires. (This was a new learning for me, which you can read more about here.)
Since G. has been halter training a beef cow for her 4-H project this past year at a local farm, our whole family has been educated with the ways of Maine farm life. G. has helped with weekly farm chores as well as the care of Sparkles (her cow) since November. And since Sparkles needs to eat this winter (as well as all the other animals at the farm), G., L. and I helped with the haying chores yesterday afternoon and evening.
Haying is hard, hot, sweaty, dirty work. It’s also quite interesting to a know-nothing-about-farming person like me. There is a science and technique behind loading and stacking the bales in the barn.
Since L. had a hard time lifting the hay bales, she was given the task of keeping the floor clear of hay in the loft. She was given a wood board for this job. L. got the hang of it but said she would have been able to do a better job with a broom (little did she understand the barn floor was never going to be free of hay).
G., having worked with her 400-pound (give or take a few pounds) cow for months now, did not have a problem swinging the hay bales in to stacks. G. has a powerful strength that she had never been able to put to constructive use before her time at the farm. But the weekly visits keep her sensory issues in check with all the heavy lifting (and wrestling with a reluctant cow to teach it to walk with a halter).
We worked hard stacking hay and I was impressed the girls worked through the last wagon delivery of the day. We made a stop at the McDonald’s drive-thru afterward for an ice cream sundae. We would have preferred different ice cream but there was no way any of us were walking in to a store covered in hay, dirt and sweat after four hours in the hayloft. The drive-thru seemed the only option for us at the time.
I thought I'd share a few of my family's learnings about stacking hay yesterday:
1. Wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt even if it is wicked hot outside. Last night G. and I were nursing cuts and a rash from the constant contact of hay on our forearms.
2. Wear gloves. We brought some and we were oh so glad we had them (see #1).
3. Bring lots and lots of water. It might have been the upper 80s outside, but on the roof of a barn, it gets a whole lot hotter.
4. People with pollen allergies should plan to have an extra dose of antihistamine and eye drops on hand along with access to an air conditioned room for the night to fight off their body’s reaction to being around that much hay. (G. and I had a rough night sleeping last night but we were feeling much better today.)
5. Taking photos in the hayloft is tricky because there were particles of hay flying around everywhere so it looked like raindrops on the camera’s lens.
6. Hay is slippery on a wood floor. Stray strands of hay fell from the bales as they came in to the barn and were being stacked and I slipped a couple of times before L. made it over to my part of the loft to clear it up. I looked and moved like the total and complete amateur while I was in that hayloft.
7. Hay bales are slippery when you climb on them. All the people in the loft had to catch the hay rolling down from the pulley thing (I’m sure it has a name, I just forgot to ask) and swing the bales in to place. Swinging a heavy bale while standing and balancing on a few bales of hay (we had to build from the floor up) took some coordination. Both G. and I took a header off the hay stack but were unhurt (unless you count the painful blush each of us conjured after the tumble).
8. There is a science to stacking the bales of hay. I was instructed to use the momentum of the bale to squash it in to place in the stack and could not seem to get the hang of it. The rest of the stacking crew made it look easy (years of experience will do that).
9. It takes about 5 1/2 hours to load and stack 1,400 bales of hay in the hayloft (we missed the first hour and half because of my work schedule). The only break the crew had during that time was between hay wagons being pulled up to the barn.
10. Those 1,400 bales of hay (plus the additional 200 or so more that will be loaded in to the barn before the end of the summer) will feed about 20-25 beef cows during winter. I thought that was a whole lot of hay for the number of animals. I knew cows ate a lot but I have a whole new perspective about how much that "a lot" actually looks like now.
A video of the hay rolling in to the barn
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