Haytime

Long day strimming. At around 8:00 pm I was out on the road busy with the strimmer and hedge-clippers cutting back all the growth that is increasingly making visibility of oncoming traffic difficult and exiting our drive dangerous. Suddenly Farmer Andreas came hurtling down from the village on his tractor and instead of the normal wave he came to an abrupt stop, opened the door and shouted: "Can I bring the hay bales?"

"Uh yes", I stuttered somewhat puzzled and as Andreas shot off down the road to one of his fields, I packed all my gear together and dashed to the stables. Angie was out walking the dogs and had no doubt organised this. I assumed she just wanted some hay for the horses to feed on during the day when they hide in the stables to get away from the flies.

Then Andreas appeared and told me it was fresh hay direct from the fields and he would be bringing six or so!. Panic set in trying to find enough Euro-pallets to fit them on as with our concrete floor set above a usually very damp cellar, it is important to get good circulation not just to further dry the fresh hay but also in the course of the coming months to ensure no moisture is "sucked" up from the floor.

Andreas had to do a 180° turn on the horse field so as to get the right angle of attack to unload the bales on to the pallets. Interesting that Sultan the grey who gets himself very worked up about any tractor when one is out riding, couldn't care in the least in such a case. He was more interested in being taken out to the lush field outside of our property and at about this time (photo was taken at 9:00 pm, Angie turned up and put him out of his waiting misery.

Turned out there had been a sort of misunderstanding. Angie had phoned Andreas at the weekend to ask if she could have an old bale (2017) to feed the horses now but there was no rush. Andreas was in fact in Switzerland for three days on a choir/singing trip but his wife said as soon as he returned she would tell him.

While he was away, his son who works fulltime at another farm, also had to do the daily milking at home and in that time, mow and dry quite a few hay fields - yes proper hay that hasn't  been mowed this year yet, a very rare sight nowadays and one has to take one's hat off to Andreas to the quality and his efforts in ensuring little or no docks and such unwanted weeds.

Ended up with seven bales of 2018 hay and one 2017 for immediate use. The fresh hay needs to dry for a few weeks before one can feed it.