Getting the fields hayed

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We had our fields hayed this year, which means we're really farmers now!  Or maybe it means our place is a real farm?  Either way, we got to watch our fields being hayed, and it was pretty neat.

The (real) farmer at the end of our road has had a bad hay season.  With the cold, wet spring, his hay crop was very poor.  Whereas in most years he would get 12 loads of hay from his fields from the first cutting, this year he only had 3!  So he was asking around the neighborhood if anyone wanted their fields hayed, and of course we said yes.  Last year we had to pay to have the whole thing brush hogged, so this would help save us money too.  

Because the fields are rather hilly on the one side, and rather swampy on the other, the farmer was only able to hay about 1/3 to 1/2 of our fields.  I tried to be very sneaky about taking pictures because I didn't want to seem like a townie who has never seen a field being hayed before (which I haven't!), so some of the pictures are from our upstairs window which has a screen in it.  

 For my fellow townies, here is the process: first the grass is mowed, then over the next day or two it's fluffed a couple of times, then it's piled into long rows, and finally it's rolled up into big round bales.  The whole thing took about three days.  The process was made longer by the fact that he got very stuck in one of our swampy areas!  We later found out that it was a surprise to him that this particular tractor could even get stuck because it's so big and powerful.

Here he is mowing the field out by the swampy area, moments before getting stuck.


Here he is being totally stuck.  It took them over an hour to get the tractor unstuck, and it's kind of a miracle that this smaller tractor was able to pull it out.  

I forgot to take pictures of him fluffing the hay, but here he is piling it into long rows.

 


Here's the baler:

And the first couple of bales:

Most of them were scattered through the field like this though: 

When he was all done, they had gotten 12 bales from our fields.  It's nice to know that some cows will eat well this winter because of our fields.


And here's some blurry photos of the kitties.



 

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