Filed under: July 2018 | Tags: bed and breakfast, draft horses, Hay help, hay loft, hay tedder, haying, Spelt, speltz, straw
July 16, 2018
The last week has been a whirlwind! Hay dried very nice in the sun. We raked and baled, hauled and stacked until we got it all in off the fields without any of it getting wet.
I modified the the hay loft door and am able to set the hay bales up into the loft with the skidsteer. I can set 5 bales up before I have to go up and roll them out of the way. This makes haying much easier for me. Most importantly, I don’t need help. Hay help is getting harder and harder to find, having overcome this fact is awesome! I can store the equivalent of 400 small square bales by doing it this new way. I will unroll the bale at feeding time and fork the hay down chutes to the horse mangers below.
The speltz straw also had to be mowed and made ready to bale
The horses and I fluffed the straw with our hay tedder. There was a lot of nice, new seeded grasses in the straw. I treated this bounty as hay. The animals will get to eat anything they want, then sleep on the rest. It gives new meaning to “bed and breakfast”. It was a hot week. The temperatures were 90F and above for many of them. The horses and I both sweated together, but we made 42 nice bales. Those bales have all been hauled in and stacked near where they will be used.
We are now ready for some needed rain. We are thankful that it held off while we scrambled to get the last of the first cutting hay harvested, the speltz combined and the straw gleaned as well. Today, it’s hot and sticky, but all of us will rest and wait for the rain…while I make a new list of work for us all.
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RicelandMeadows 
Mr Rice-What size round bales do you make? Also, what type of fertilizer do you use on the spelt grain?
Comment by roy j mcguffey July 16, 2018 @ 12:29 pmI make 4×4 bales. If I use fertilizer on the spelt, I put on 6-12-12 at planting. Keep nitrogen low to keep the plants from growing too tall then lodging (falling over) I usually just plant on ground where I have spread compost/manure, plowed it under and created a seedbed. They do well for me in this manner. I have never sprayed for any type of weed control. They simply outpace weeds and don’t need it.
Comment by ricelandmeadows July 17, 2018 @ 7:38 am