The Last Bale

As we completed the fourth and last field, the counter on the baler read 3073.

This number is good news and bad news.

The good news is that we have the barns stuffed full and there is plenty of feed for the herd. The bad news has to do with me.

Over the years we have spent on this farm, we have tried to produce enough hay for our herd without needing to go out to purchase and haul home more feed. The last 3 years we have had to augment our hay supply with purchases. I had adopted a mantra that was nearing the nagging stage, “five less cows, five less babies.”

It never seemed to be a good time to cull out the herd. Once I was told the market was too strong, the animals were too good a value to get rid of. The next year I was told the market was too weak and we would not get enough money for the animals if we sold them. Last year I was told that our current genetics are ‘just right’ and the critters were too high a quality to be thinned out.

I finally wore him down with my mantra holding strong through the years, Mike started to weed out a few candidates and he did bring down the total herd membership even though it was not yet as low as I was preaching about.

Now with the hay season nearing completion, we have enough bales to feed all the animals that we currently have. So we do not need to sell anymore of the breeding stock at this time. My mantra is on hold for a little while until the herd uses up this good supply of hay.