Bringing in the Sheaves

Having horses is an expensive proposition. IYKYK. Because ours live with us, we don’t pay board (unless you count the mortgage). However, two of the horses are elders and one has nubs for teeth, so they’re on a special senior diet. It’s spendy, but they’re healthy and it’s worth it.The other three are thankfully super easy keepers, so we keep the elders in one pasture and the trio, as we call them, in another. Finn loves it. He’s got a harem of two.

Finn’s harem, Willa and LiLi, looking plump and happy.

Mare LiLi looks at food and gains weight. The pony is very similar. Finn has maintained his weight beautifully since he was rescued from the kill pen and given decent feed a couple times a day, plus they have their big pasture to wander around in and nibble on grass. The elders have a big pasture too, and they like grass nibbling almost more than hay. Nothing beats senior feed, though, and if they had a bucket and something to hit it with, we’d hear a huge racket twice a day while they wait for their “nummies.”Life is good for our horses.

Elder Tango nibbles on a little hay while awaiting “the good stuff.”

I can remember when I could get hay here in Colorado for $1.50 a bale. Of course, that was (OMG!!) almost 50 years ago. Nowadays, it’s 10 times that much. So we have this 30 acre field that we can get hay out of. It was a really nice selling point when we purchased the property, since that hay production saves us a lot in feed dollars.

We can harvest the hay once a year, since it’s kind of dry here on the plains. (In Wisconsin, we got at least two cuttings from our small field, and sometimes three if the weather was just right.)

We don’t have any equipment, so we have to find someone to cut and bale the hay for us. All us neighbors work together to make it easy-ish for the guy. The more fields to bale, the easier it is. The equipment can be moved into an area and go from field to field. Getting hay equipment from one place to another is an adventure in itself, and I’m glad it’s not something I have to do. The people who do the cutting and baling deserve a lot of respect.

In past years we’ve had people come out and pick the bales out of the field and store them in our barn for us, for a minimal per-bale sum. This year was pretty sparse, though, despite what seemed like a lot of rain, and we had a different hay baling person who split the bales with us 50/50 - he took half the bales as payment. It’s a good deal since there’s no cash outlay on our end, but it did cut down on how much hay we got for ourselves. 

ANYWAY, since it was pretty sparse this year, and we were getting half, there weren’t really enough bales to have the speedy bale picker-uppers come out and pick up. After some discussion, we decided to bring the bales in ourselves. How hard could it be? We called another friend who loves to work out here, and a neighbor who is awesome. With one thing and another, the one day we could all be in the field turned out to be a day the weather didn’t cooperate, and we had to wait to bring in the bales. So instead of six people bringing in the hay, we had three. And me driving the truck and trailer around.

Then Glenn had a really rough day at work and couldn’t leave right away. We were down to two. And me driving the truck and trailer around.

Heavy bales. HEAVY.

The bales were tightly packed and HEAVY. Well, that was a surprise, but does explain why we got so few bales out of the field. Most small bales in Colorado are 50-60 lbs, and even I can move those, given enough time and some clever leveraging. The bales in our field, I’m not kidding, must weigh 80 lbs each. I couldn’t even slide them around on the trailer. We had two guys lifting the bales from the field onto the trailer. Glenn was able to get away and help, finally, so that made things go a little easier. But holy cats! None of us expected that kind of workout. I hope the guys know how grateful we are for their jockness and muscle (we did tell them multiple times).

Glenn did some stacking and then jobs got traded. None of the jobs was easy.

So next time you see people hauling hay in from a field, send them a little love. They work hard, it’s a thankless job, and the ones who do it for a “living” get paid next to nothing. Our little team didn’t get paid at all, so I think we’ll have a thank-you cookout for them and their families. It’s the least we can do. Hopefully they’ll pick up the phone when we call to invite them.