Once hay is cut, dried, and raked into windrows, it’s ready to be baled.
Here on my farm, my outdoor grounds crew has just finished harvesting and stacking more than 550 bales of hay for my horses. While the first cutting was harvested in June, this second cutting is finer, leafier, and richer in protein and energy, making it especially nutritious. I am fortunate to have both the dedicated team and the equipment needed to produce high-quality hay for my herd.
Enjoy these photos.
The hay is ready to bale when hay pulled from the bottom of the windrow makes a crunching sound when snapped. Chhiring drives the tractor and starts the process midday when there is the least amount of moisture.
A baler is a piece of farm machinery that compresses the cut and raked crop into compact bales that are easy to handle, transport, and store. The baler is attached to the tractor, and then the hay wagon is attached to the baler.
The bales get thrown into this wagon, which holds about 150 bales. Two outdoor grounds crew members ride in here and work together to grab the bales and stack them. Everyone is ready to go!
The tractor rides to one side of the windrow while the baler passes directly over it to collect the hay.
The baler picks up windrowed hay using a rotating pickup reel designed to lift the crop cleanly from the ground and feed it into the baling chamber.
The motor helps to move and propel the bales into the wagon. A measuring device – the spiked wheel – is turned by the emerging bales. It measures the amount of material that is being compressed and then the knotters wrap the twine around the bale and tie it off.
Large rolls of twine are positioned and tied to each other, so they can feed into the baler and secure the hay just before it shoots out into the wagon.
Once it is tied, it moves up this conveyor belt…
Here is a bale of hay as it is lifted in the baler’s reel, moved, and finally propelled into the wagon by a mechanical arm called a thrower or a kicker.
Here’s a view from the front. The crew is ready to kick the bale to stop, so it can be picked up and stacked.
The bales are manageable for one person to handle, about 45 to 60 pounds each. The crew must work quickly with someone always on the lookout for the next shooting bale.
The best moisture range for hay bales is generally between 12 and 18-percent. This range is crucial for maintaining the hay’s nutritional value and preventing spoilage. Chhiring tests several bales to make sure they are within the desired range.
As one makes windrows, the other pulls the baler up and down the field.
Once a wagon is full enough to unload, it is brought to my stable hayloft.
To get the bales up into the hayloft of my stable, a long motorized bale conveyor, or hay elevator, is set up from the wagon to the window of the loft.
A hay elevator is an open skeletal frame, with a chain that has dull three-inch spikes every few feet to grab bales and drag them along.
The apparatus works as a pulley system on a track that moves the bales up to the loft.
As bales ride up, Pete stands by to accept them.
One by one, Pete pulls the bale off the elevator and passes it to someone else for stacking.
Neat, tight stacks of hay are made in the loft – there are a lot of bales to store here.
These bales will stay here until needed. With a full stable, this does not take long. It makes me so happy to know I can grow good, nutritious hay for my horses right here at my farm.
Here at my farm, we've been enjoying a stretch of dry, sunny, warm weather with light winds and low humidity - all ideal for the multi-day process of haymaking.
Hay is harvested forage that must be dried and cured after it is cut in the field. For best nutritional value, most hay is cut during the late bud or early bloom stage. This week, my grounds crew is cutting, tedding, raking, and baling the hay. The first cut was done in June, but this second cut is especially impressive: greener, denser, and packed with protein. My horses are going to love it.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
Timing is everything when cutting the hay crop. We hope for at least several days of good, dry, warm weather, so we can work in the fields and guarantee a good harvest.
My outdoor grounds crew foreman, Chhiring Sherpa, and Helen Peparo, my stable manager, keep track of the weather during hay cutting time. It’s crucial they select the best days for this process.
When the hay is ready, it is typically 12 to 16 inches above the ground. The stems are finer, and the overall texture is smoother. At this stage, the plants are still in a growth phase, so the hay will be high in protein, digestible, and palatable for my horses.
This is my mower-conditioner. It cuts, crimps, and crushes the hay to promote faster and more even drying.
The discs and blades are located behind the machine’s protective shield.
Before using, Chhiring checks the blades. Here are two blades – one new and one that needed replacing.
Each blade can be used twice – usually for the first and then the second cut of hay in the season.
Chhiring also checks all the joints and makes sure they are well-greased.
On cutting day, Chhiring goes around the fields counter clockwise cutting all the hay. The process of cutting should take about an hour per field. I have three large fields.
The hay goes through the machine and processes the hay one wide strip at a time.
Here, one can see what has been cut and what Chhiring still has to do. It is important that Chhiring moves slowly enough to get every area of the hay field cut. He does not want to miss any bit.
Here’s Jimmy preparing what is called the tedder for the next phase of the process.
A hay tedder spreads and fluffs the hay in a uniform swath. It uses a rotary motion to grab the hay with spinning tines that cast it out the back of the machine.
Here is one of the tines that picks up and flips the hay.
This part of the process allows air circulation for drying and is crucial for conditioning the hay so it is ready for harvest. Chhiring and Jimmy like to fluff each field at least twice.
Jimmy must drive through the field, carefully watching that he has flipped everything that was cut.
Next, windrows are made out of the dry, cut hay. Windrows are rows of hay raked up and shaped before being baled. Attached to a tractor, Phurba pulls the bar rake at an angle and makes windrows from the tedded hay.
This apparatus uses pins to spread, turn, and gather cut or dried hay in the field.
The bar rake, also known as a basket rake is hydraulically driven. This rake allows for consistent movement across the fields making well-shaped windrows.
My fields are all planted with a mixture of timothy, orchard grass, Kentucky bluegrass, ryegrass, and clover. This is a well-shaped windrow.
Once several rows of windrows are made, the hay baling can begin!
Ready? In my next blog – what it takes to bale, stack, and store my hay!
I have long admired allées and have incorporated several into my farm's landscape over the years.
In landscaping, an allée, or avenue, is traditionally a straight path or road lined with trees or large shrubs on either side. Typically, the plantings are of the same species or cultivar, creating a uniform appearance along the entire length of the allée. In 2019, I decided to establish an allée along the carriage road through my lower hayfields. I planted a combination of London plane trees and approximately 100 Royal Purple smoke bushes, Cotinus coggygria. The allée is maturing beautifully and so quickly with the smoke bushes growing more than three feet each year. This week they were pruned and groomed.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
Along the carriage road adjacent to my Equipment Barn, I have a mature allée of pin oaks. It is one of the first allées I planted when I purchased my farm. One of the tree’s most distinguishable traits is that its lower branches hang down, while the middle branches reach out horizontally and the upper branches grow upright.
This is one of two allées of linden, Tilia – medium to large shade trees that are easy to maintain and beautiful in any landscape. This one starts up near my Winter House and extends to the Boxwood Allée and then to the chicken coops.
Here is the other half. I love how these trees have developed over the years.
And here is my long Boxwood allée leading to my stable. Buxus is a genus of at least 70-species in the family Buxaceae. It is a very versatile plant that provides strong shape and rich green color.
Among the newest allées at my farm is one planted with London plane trees and smoke bushes along both sides of a carriage road to my woodlands. I planted 46 London plane trees in this allée, but with all the growth of the Cotinus, it’s hard to see them. The smoke bushes are so healthy – they’ve grown about three feet in just one year. This is a section before pruning.
To share some of the development, here is the allée in 2022, three years after it was first planted.
Here it is in 2024.
And this year, they’re in need of a good pruning. These are pruned every summer. The smoke bushes all around the farm have grown so much because of careful and consistent care.
Cutting it back regularly can help the Cotinus retain its most colorful foliage.
The name “smoke bush” comes from the billowy hairs attached to the flower clusters which remain in place through the season, turning a smoky pink to purplish-pink and then light brown as the weeks progress.
Pasang Sherpa is my resident tree pruner. He does a wonderful job overseeing the maintenance of all the trees here at my farm. I like as much of the pruning and grooming to be done by hand, so Pasang trims every branch with his pruners – one by one.
Pasang goes deep into the plant to lop or cut off any superfluous branches or shoots for better shape and better growth.
He cuts off any dead or crisscrossing branches first. The rule of thumb when pruning is to cut the dead, diseased, damaged, non-productive, structurally unsound, or otherwise unwanted plant material.
Here, one can see where he pruned the branch last year and the new branches that have grown since.
As the branches are cut, Pasang gathers them in neat bunches, so they are easy to collect later and take to the compost yard.
Here is a pruned smoke bush.
Here, one can see what Pasang pruned and what he has to prune next.
And here is a section done – the London plane trees are now easier to see.
The London plane tree, Platanus × acerifolia, is a deciduous tree. It is a cross between two sycamore species: Platanus occidentalis, the American sycamore, and Platanus orientalis, the Oriental plane. London planes grow best in full sun, but they can also thrive in partial shade. These are growing excellently.
These leathery leaves are about six to seven inches wide with roughly toothed edges.
After every pruning, the Cotinus grows bushier with larger leaves. Both the Cotinus and London Planes grow fuller every year.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
