- Apr 9, 2011
- 3,974
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I'm going to gripe about hay for a little, here.
I was going to buy a half-ton of orchard grass when it first came in last summer, but there was a lot of other stuff going on- notably illness and equiptment break-downs- so I couldn't build a storage table (I'm seriously NOT SUPPOSED TO LEAN OVER) so I've been buying- or rther my sister has been buying for me- one bale at a time and it's getting obvious that about late july of last year people started cutting anything they could get a mower in to, and running it through the square baler regardless of damage to the equipment.
The bale before the one I've got nowwas the worst yet: sold as orchard grass, it had no strand nor seedhead identifiable as Dactylis glomerata; instead, it was almost all canary grass, with some random wheat and even bentgrass, as if they'd cut right over the drainage ditch and into the lawn. It had to go away: the sheep, after the first flake, refused to eat it at all. It was replaced by one that's "mixed native grass" and has a little moss and half a great big over-grown alfalfa plant, including a substantial amount of powder-fine shed alfalfa leaf. At least this one is easy to clean up for the chickes: put a flake in a big shopping bag and whack it on the ground once and shake it and all the little bits are there at the bottom for them to eat.
It would be amusing if I hadn't spent way too many summer mornings being dragged out of bed in front of a rainstorm to drive every truck and trailer anyone could get moving, to get every leaf of grass that was down and raked, baled and picked up and under some kind of cover before it got wet, and if there weren't several hundred six-foot round bales on the place, being fed to the cattle and ground for the pigs. Square bales are a suckers game, anymore, they don't pay for the fuel unless you've got brand-new high efficiency machinery and there's nobody to hire to buck bales, no matter how bad the economy gets.
I was going to buy a half-ton of orchard grass when it first came in last summer, but there was a lot of other stuff going on- notably illness and equiptment break-downs- so I couldn't build a storage table (I'm seriously NOT SUPPOSED TO LEAN OVER) so I've been buying- or rther my sister has been buying for me- one bale at a time and it's getting obvious that about late july of last year people started cutting anything they could get a mower in to, and running it through the square baler regardless of damage to the equipment.
The bale before the one I've got nowwas the worst yet: sold as orchard grass, it had no strand nor seedhead identifiable as Dactylis glomerata; instead, it was almost all canary grass, with some random wheat and even bentgrass, as if they'd cut right over the drainage ditch and into the lawn. It had to go away: the sheep, after the first flake, refused to eat it at all. It was replaced by one that's "mixed native grass" and has a little moss and half a great big over-grown alfalfa plant, including a substantial amount of powder-fine shed alfalfa leaf. At least this one is easy to clean up for the chickes: put a flake in a big shopping bag and whack it on the ground once and shake it and all the little bits are there at the bottom for them to eat.
It would be amusing if I hadn't spent way too many summer mornings being dragged out of bed in front of a rainstorm to drive every truck and trailer anyone could get moving, to get every leaf of grass that was down and raked, baled and picked up and under some kind of cover before it got wet, and if there weren't several hundred six-foot round bales on the place, being fed to the cattle and ground for the pigs. Square bales are a suckers game, anymore, they don't pay for the fuel unless you've got brand-new high efficiency machinery and there's nobody to hire to buck bales, no matter how bad the economy gets.
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