Need to borrow a scythe?
1 Like
A tractor with a cutter should do the trick. 
Beautiful shot. What’s the mountain in the background?
2 Likes
It’s Horseshoe Mountain, overlooking Mount Pleasant and (mostly) Spring City.
3 Likes
Some of the most beautiful country anywhere, particularly this time of year.
1 Like
The rule at my moms house growing up was that you couldn’t swim in the creek unless the snow was gone from horseshoe mountain.
5 Likes
Proud of my family history going back to the founding of Spring City.
3 Likes
There’s a lot of worry about flooding this year when that happens.
Looks pretty close. Some guys like to wait for flowers to pop. If you are cutting for silage it looks ready now. I think most of this goes for cubed hay for export so I’m guessing maybe in the next week or so.
This farmer likes to have the alfalfa 3-4" below his beltline. He’s about 6’ tall. It’s educational for this city boy to watch.
Flowers are the signal for a lot of guys who like bale the hay. My grandpa was one who cut at that stage. A guy I used to help with putting up silage would cut much earlier. He would put it in a silage pit and I got to drive a big tractor to push the ground up alfalfa and/ or barley up into the pit and drive over it to pack it down. The pit was basically a concrete pad with vertical concrete walls on either side. It was kind of fun to drive the tractor over the growing pile of silage.
3 Likes
Yeah, my guy bales it all, as far as I know. Interestingly, after he cuts it he leaves it lying on the field for a few days. He says the moisture that collects in those long rows of cut alfalfa helps when it’s all baled. I forget why he says that is.
1 Like
If you cut in the morning there could be dew or other moisture on the outside of the alfalfa. You let it sit and absorb the moisture so it’s dry on the outside but moist in the plants. Wet hay (on the outside) can mildew which makes it inedible for animals. Some guys back home will use dryers to help get rid of excess water from rain before baling. Modern round balers are often essentially shrink wrapped in plastic to keep the rain off until the hay is fed to animals.
My dad worked for Hesston. They made a machine that made full haystacks (looked like a giant loaf of bread), and also a machine that would move those stacks. There was less “waste” as rain would only get on the outside of the stack and not work it’s way down amongst individual bales.
1 Like
My neighbor would have 2 of those hay stacks delivered for their milk cows for the winter. He got a little mad at his son and I after we burrowed a hole inside and made a little fort.
6 Likes
Here’s one of those Hesston hay stackers at work. Stacking Hay with a Hesston 30B - June 2019 - YouTube
I would say that Hesston made/makes some of the best hay equipment in the business. Back in the day we cut barley silage with a Hesston forage harvester. It did a great job of cutting and chopping green feed to make great silage. They also had some great hay conditioning equipment as well.
2 Likes