making hay

[masraum]

There's a field next to our house that's about 15 acres give or take. It's used to make hay (agricultural status for the property for tax purposes). The hay has been growing all year. The other day they came out and cut the hay. That seemed fairly obvious and self explanatory.

Today they showed up with a new attachment on the tractor. Today they are stirring the cut hay up. I'd guessed that they need the hay dry, so they are stirring it up to ensure even dryness. I looked it up, apparently they are using the "hay tedder" which is just a fluffer (that Livi guy really gets around) for the cut hay. "A tedder spreads and fluffs the hay in a uniform swath after the mower-conditioner has made the windrows." Interesting!

I guess next will be raking and then baling. This is interesting.

The other interesting thing is that after they cut the hay, it was a feast for the turkey vultures (oddly, I didn't see any black vultures which is what I usually find here). There have been probably 10-20 vultures in the field for the past couple of days. I'm guessing they've been snaking on rats and mice and snakes that didn't make it out of the way of the cutting. I also saw a Northern Crested Caracara in the field in the evening yesterday.

It's nice, the tractor is nice and quiet. At the closest point, it may only be 40' from the house, and most folks wouldn't realize it unless they saw it.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by masraum

There's a field next to our house that's about 15 acres give or take. It's used to make hay (agricultural status for the property for tax purposes). The hay has been growing all year. The other day they came out and cut the hay. That seemed fairly obvious and self explanatory.

Today they showed up with a new attachment on the tractor. Today they are stirring the cut hay up. I'd guessed that they need the hay dry, so they are stirring it up to ensure even dryness. I looked it up, apparently they are using the "hay tedder" which is just a fluffer (that Livi guy really gets around) for the cut hay. "A tedder spreads and fluffs the hay in a uniform swath after the mower-conditioner has made the windrows." Interesting!

I guess next will be raking and then baling. This is interesting.

The other interesting thing is that after they cut the hay, it was a feast for the turkey vultures (oddly, I didn't see any black vultures which is what I usually find here). There have been probably 10-20 vultures in the field for the past couple of days. I'm guessing they've been snaking on rats and mice and snakes that didn't make it out of the way of the cutting. I also saw a Northern Crested Caracara in the field in the evening yesterday.

It's nice, the tractor is nice and quiet. At the closest point, it may only be 40' from the house, and most folks wouldn't realize it unless they saw it.

You really don't want to put that away when it is wet. The fire department will thank you.

[IROC]

I hauled a lot of hay when I was a kid. And cut/spiked/hung/stripped a lot of tobacco. I forget that not everyone grew up that way and assumed everyone knew about the process of making hay.

[flipper35]

When I started in IT one of the guys that helped part time was a full time farmer and had two very attractive girls. The girls would mention they had to stack the hay in the barn and all the high school boys volunteered to come help the girls. The girls ended up not having to stack at all, just unload the wagons.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by flipper35

You really don't want to put that away when it is wet. The fire department will thank you.

Interesting. What you're saying is wet hay is a fire hazard, but dry hay is not, which is counter intuitive. I'm guessing it has to do with weight/mass. A huge, wet, heavy round of hay is more likely to create the pressure and heat necessary to start a fire than a dry, light one? I would have thought that it would be more about wet hay growing mold and fungus making it worthless for animals. This country livin' thing is interesting.

[flipper35]

Wet hay will start to compost and get hot enough to spontaneously combust.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by flipper35

Wet hay will start to compost and get hot enough to spontaneously combust.

Yep, I didn't expect that.

Baled stored hay can get wet during spring as a result of melting snow or rainwater. Stored forages with high sugar content (i.e. hay baled at high quality-early vegetative stage) usually have higher nutritive value. At the same time, they could be at greater risk of achieving higher temperatures upon exposure to air particularly when they are not stored at the right moisture. As spring progresses, higher ambient temperatures together with air infiltration favor the growth of bacteria and molds that further build-up heat. If air continues to penetrate the mass, oxidation by these microorganisms may continue until spontaneous combustion occurs. For this reason, bales stored with excessive moisture are also more susceptible to heating as they constitute and ideal substrate for microorganisms.

[MRM]

Wet hay creates heat through a chemical process that will cause a fire if the hay is wet enough. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/news/newsreleases/2011/july-25-2011/don2019t-risk-hay-fires#:~:text=Excessive%20moisture%20is%20the%20mo st%20common%20cause%20of,hay.%20The%20wet%20condit ions%20also%20impede%20hay’s%20dry-down.

Baling hay ahead of a thunderstorm and pushing the envelope a bit is interesting. You get a wet bale into the barn and you can feel the heat radiating from the hay. It feels a lot like an overheated cell phone or laptop that’s about to blow its battery. You can feel the heat right through your gloves. Except no one really wears gloves baling. Wet hay is also very heavy. No one wants to throw a wet hay bale.

Dry hay is pretty hard to burn. It’s like paper. If you get it started and have enough oxygen it will go like a blast furnace, but it needs to be loose and dry to do anything.

Wet hay also molds and either loses nutrients or gets full-on toxic snd kills anything that eats it. You need to get hay as dry as possible as fast as possible so it doesn’t get rained on before it gets put up. Any rain on cut hay really hurts the quality. So anything you can do to crimp the hay and get it dry fast is valuable. In the Upper Midwest we don’t have as large of fields and probably have more grass in our alfalfa so we don’t use teddys. We use haybines or “crimpers” that kind of combine the fluffing process with mowing and leaves the hay in rows. Then we go right to raking, then bailing.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by masraum

Today they showed up with a new attachment on the tractor. Today they are stirring the cut hay up. I'd guessed that they need the hay dry, so they are stirring it up to ensure even dryness.

We did hay for a winter crop for years. Not hard, frankly.

I sold my hay rake about ten years ago. I did the cutting and raking, but the baler was a friend of mines.



I can't find the picture of the automatic baler grabber and stacker we used...there is some really cool new designs as well.

Again, I didn't own it!

BTW, a lot of small animals get killed in initial cutting. Depending on the time of year, baby rabbits, snakes, field mice, etc. take a hit.

I hated that part.

[MRM]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

We did hay for a winter crop for years. Not hard, frankly.

I can't find the picture of the automatic baler grabber and stacker we used...there is some really cool new designs as well.

Didn't you use a kicker baler?

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by MRM

Didn't you use a kicker baler?

I should have been more clear.

Kick baler (also fun to use) for making squares. Then my guy had a New Holland Stack Wagon, self propelled.

https://www.sodbustersales.com/wagon-specs



50 acres of hay is a LOT of hay. This thing made it a breeze.

[gordner]

Originally Posted by masraum

Yep, I didn't expect that.

A total aside, but when I worked in Grand Prairie, Alberta there was a lumber mill in the center of town that, at any given time, stored about 5 million board feet of dimensional lumber. They had a rotation schedule for moving it in and out they were bound to. One year when they fell behind and the stack had been sitting untouched for about a month, it ignited in the center due to composting. Burned for over a week, made for quite a show having firefighting aircraft dumping in basically the center of town.
All they did was wet surrounding areas to deter spread, according to the fire fighters they had to let it burn down, no way to actually extinguish it wherein it would not just immediately re light.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

We did hay for a winter crop for years. Not hard, frankly.

I sold my hay rake about ten years ago. I did the cutting and raking, but the baler was a friend of mines.



I can't find the picture of the automatic baler grabber and stacker we used...there is some really cool new designs as well.

Again, I didn't own it!

BTW, a lot of small animals get killed in initial cutting. Depending on the time of year, baby rabbits, snakes, field mice, etc. take a hit.

I hated that part.

This is interesting for what is basically a 'burb boy (not really a city boy either).

We've got a "yard" that is about 1.5-2 acres and I keep mowed pretty clean and short to keep snakes and critters to a minimum near the house and so the grandkids can play without us worrying. Then we've got stuff outside of that area that due to time, weather, whatever may not get mowed as frequently. I've mowed that stuff when it was 12-18" deep. I've seen lots of mice and rats when it gets deep like that. I haven't seen any dead critters, but I assume that's because when it gets that deep, we end up having to go pretty slow since we're mowing and not shredding. We really probably need a bigger tractor with a shredder, but that's not in the cards yet.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I should have been more clear.

Kick baler (also fun to use) for making squares. Then my guy had a New Holland Stack Wagon, self propelled.

https://www.sodbustersales.com/wagon-specs



50 acres of hay is a LOT of hay. This thing made it a breeze.

Around here, I think 95% or more of the hay ends up as the huge rounds.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by gordner

A total aside, but when I worked in Grand Prairie, Alberta there was a lumber mill in the center of town that, at any given time, stored about 5 million board feet of dimensional lumber. They had a rotation schedule for moving it in and out they were bound to. One year when they fell behind and the stack had been sitting untouched for about a month, it ignited in the center due to composting. Burned for over a week, made for quite a show having firefighting aircraft dumping in basically the center of town.
All they did was wet surrounding areas to deter spread, according to the fire fighters they had to let it burn down, no way to actually extinguish it wherein it would not just immediately re light.

Wow, crazy. Sure, the only things that would be worse than a lumber might be things like a fuel depot, gun powder factory, or coal mine.

[stevej37]

[QUOTE=masraum;11404859]
The other interesting thing is that after they cut the hay, it was a feast for the turkey vultures (oddly, I didn't see any black vultures which is what I usually find here). There have been probably 10-20 vultures in the field for the past couple of days. I'm guessing they've been snaking on rats and mice and snakes that didn't make it out of the way of the cutting. I also saw a Northern Crested Caracara in the field in the evening yesterday.


Here...the farmers have to deal with the Sand Hill Cranes.
The day after a farmer plants corn...they are walking down the rows spearing the seed out to eat.

[wdfifteen]

Haying was my favorite task on the farm, as I had a lot of responsibility for a kid of 9 or 10. Dad had me get up early and mow with our 1950 John Deere B and mounted #5 mower in order to get the hay down so it would start it drying as soon as the sun came up. After I cut the hay I got to use our “big” tractor – Dad’s John Deere 520 (power steering, live PTO, and 33 hp!!) – to run the crimper over the cut hay. Then I used our Ford 2N and Massey Harris side delivery rake to rake the hay that had been cut the day before.
Especially with the first cutting of hay for the year the mower would get fouled and you had to stop it and clear it. The “B” didn’t have a live PTO and if you just pulled the clutch when the mower got clogged the mower would stop running before the tractor stopped rolling and it would really get clogged. So I put a long screwdriver in the shifter quadrant and when the mower clogged I would kick the screwdriver and pop the transmission out of gear. That way the tractor stopped but the mower kept running and sometimes it would clear itself before I had to get off the tractor and do it by hand. When dad figured out what I was doing he was furious and put a stop to it.
Raking was slow easy work on the second and third cutting of hay. By then the hay was almost all alfalfa and dad didn’t want me knocking any leaves off by beating the hay around, so he made me go really slow. I nearly fell asleep on the tractor more than once.
One year I was running the John Deere 14T baler, which was usually Dad’s job so being in charge of the baler was big stuff. I was trying to beat a thunderstorm. Getting wet greatly reduces the quality of the hay if it doesn’t ruin it. It seems like we were always trying to beat a thunderstorm. I was pushing the baler hard, probably had the 520 in 4th gear, and the “hay hand” loading the wagon was complaining about how hard he was working. I was really popping the bales out of the chute. The hay hands were always a problem because they were 16 years old or more and I was their 10 year old boss. I pushed things a little too hard and sheared off a shear pin, which disconnected the PTO to the baler. The shear pin was just a ¼ inch bolt about 4” long and when it sheared it left a 1” piece and a 3” piece on the ground somewhere under the baler. The hay hand was really happy, figured we were done for the day, but I got him to get down on the ground with me and look for the 3” piece. He complained the whole time but we found it. He kept saying, "You're really going to get into trouble if you don't just go back to the barn." I stuck it back in the flywheel backwards, started it up, and it held. We finished the field in time and saved the hay and I was the proudest 10 year old kid you ever saw.

Funny I can remember the make and model of the farm machinery we had 60 years ago but I have to look up the year and body style of my Toyota truck every time I schedule service.

[gordner]

Originally Posted by masraum

Wow, crazy. Sure, the only things that would be worse than a lumber might be things like a fuel depot, gun powder factory, or coal mine.

The Fire chief I spoke to said it is a catch 22. If they break up the pile, it becomes an out of control blaze, if they do not, it continually self ignites.

So burn to ashes is the approach.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

Haying was my favorite task on the farm, as I had a lot of responsibility for a kid of 9 or 10.

Good stuff, WD. It's a different world from what I was doing, for sure.

[Seahawk]

My son learned early that all hands were required.

His Mom took this picture.

I was on a business trip and we needed to get the hay in. Typical Mid Atlantic weather. Blue skies than deluge.

He and his 8th grade friends got it done. They loved the sense of accomplishment.

I hired at least four of them for the next four years until they went to college. Two for summers after that. Great kids.