After almost two months now of hearing nothing but farm ATVs buzzing around, the tractors are all out in full force. It's a great sound. We have finally had a couple days of sunny, dry weather and everyone's helping everyone get their mostly first cutting of hay off the fields. What a crazy summer!
Our back field is approximately five acres. We've kept it mowed regularly since we moved here and other than a small rocky drainage area, it's become a beautiful, nearly weed free field. Now that we only have two horses, it's mostly sitting idle until it cools off enough that Kate and I can put the sheep on a forced march out there. We offered it to a neighbor up the road.
This is how things work around here, and why we love being part of our really nice neighborhood. Kurt cut the hay (he's the one with the cows who are going to eat the hay). Stella's grandson Matthew is tedding for him in this picture and another neighbor, Phillip, came later in the afternoon yesterday to bale. Maisie watched from the shady barn ;-).
"I wonder if that's all for me?"
It looks like they got at least 16 or so big rolls. So pretty. They won't be here long. Someone, maybe Kent, will come pick them up before they kill the grass underneath them. I'll enjoy them while they are here. The best part will be this winter when it's cold and snowy and we see his cows enjoying a little taste of summer and we'll enjoy knowing we, too, played a part in the neighborhood.
7 comments:
Sounds like your neighborhood is a beautiful example of teamwork in action! :-)
You don't need the hay for your own horses and sheep?
We'd love to have that hay, but we don't have any haying equipment and can't find anyone willing/who has time to do square bales for us :-/. The benefit for the sheep and horses with this is the savings of money for fuel to mow that every two weeks like we'd have had to with all the rain this year. A bigger benefit is to the environment from not mowing that all year long. So, not all a loss :-).
What I wondered about was the type of hay as I know everyone (sheep/horses/cows) can't eat Everything...well, some think they can :)
I don't think we've seeded anything special in that back field, just mowed it to keep the undesirable weeds from re-seeding for us. I'd have to go look and see if I could ID the various grasses. Good fall project ;-).
It is such a blessing to have good neighbours!
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