Riddle Me This

This hay season of drips and drops seems to be never ending. Don’t get me wrong, I still love hay season even with all the complaints, sore muscles, dead dog tired dragging myself into the house at 9pm to eat a bite of dinner before tumbling into bed days between showery days of waiting and waiting… wait, maybe it doesn’t sound like the most fun of seasons does it?

Mike has his own way of coping by dividing each field up in to sections and then trying to harvest only one section at a time since the window of opportunity, the nearly non-existent sunshine needed to get bales stored in the barns for winter, has been doled out in hours rather than days or weeks this year.

Our biggest field has been split into three separate harvests for the first time ever. It was in early June that Mike mowed a small section in the front of the field to test the equipment and to make sure everything was ready for hay season including giving our bodies a good warm up. I was concerned because he started over two weeks early to jump into hay season even though it was only a couple of acres. Looking back on the test spot, I’m glad he started when he did or we would never have gotten started with the season if he hadn’t. It is also a good thing that Mike fenced off the back corner of the field in April to give the main herd extra grazing area until we could get all the harvested fields cleared by the hay harvest.

Instead of grousing about the fits and starts of the season, I’ve decided to make a game out of the final fields. This is where I ask for help from all the awesome readers! I’ll lay out the scope of this field we are working on and those of you who would like to play along are encouraged to break out those sharpened pencils and do a little calculating.

Send in your educated guesses as to the harvest count of the bales and I will reward winning guesses with something. You make be asking what kind of something, I asked that same question! I would offer a hay bale, but they are so hard to come by this year, that may as well be saying I would drop a gold bar at your door and yet many of you would not have a use for a hay bale anyway. I was thinking more along the lines of a head of red cabbage straight from the garden (they should be ready in a couple of weeks), or a quart of dried yellow transparent apple slices from our heritage tree (that also should be ready in a couple weeks) from the garden, or Chanterelle mushrooms that will be popping up in the woods this fall (and I am sincerely hoping hay season will finally be finished by then). For those of you who are not local, I would be happy to ship the winnings to your door.

In order for you to make your guesses, you will need a little information.

1. The total field size is 17 acres in a long looping arc around a bend in the river. We had fenced off 2 acres in the back corner of the field in very early spring to give the main herd extra grazing space while we let the hay grow in the field.
2. In early June, while the grass was still growing quickly (and when I kept reminding Mike that it was way too early to begin hay season but he mowed it anyway), 153 bales were harvested from 3 acres. This area was relatively flat and growing fairly evenly.
3. Since early June we mowed another 5 acres of the field and still had trouble getting some of the wetter areas dry enough to bale but we ended up with 590 bales. This field has a low spot and a short drainage ditch.
4. Now that the grass is ripe and no longer growing but the ground is still wet enough to keep the clover growing and adding tonnage, Mike mowed the last 7 acres of the field.
5. Reminders that the upper side of the field is closer to the hillside where it is in shade from 4pm on each day, the lower side that is close to the river is very heavy with clover, and the middle is ripe enough so that it is no longer growing. And the elk have been in and out of this field eating as much as they can before we holler at them.

Now sharpen you thoughts and give me your guesses as to how many bales we will get off the last 7 acres of this field. A winner will be picked that is closest to the actual number of bales we get from this part of the field will win a fabulous prize AND another winner will be chosen that guesses closest to what Mike has figured we will have when done with the field. GO!

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