Thanks all.
Thing is, BH pretty much lives for making hay. I say to everyone, "His favourite things are hay-making, hunting [following a foot pack], football and me. I'm pretty confident I am in the top 3 but I absolutely know that hay-making comes first!"
For us, since he loves doing it (and I mean small rectangular bales if at all possible, so we can do it all ourselves with our own kit), it's cheaper than paying the contractors to do it all. Of course we make silage too, but the heavy contractors gear damages the ground (unless it's very dry - which has not been seen for five years), the wrap and net is environmentally unfriendly, and it's more difficult for us to use. Furthermore, we have a lot of smallholding and horsey friends who come to us for a few bales of hay to meet their needs over the winter. And, probably not finally but finally for now, baling, stooking, leading-in and mewing the hay is one time when we do need help from friends and relations - and a field full of sweaty helpers getting in the crop is a deeply satisfying sight - something very primal about it.
Last summer (not so wet as the three before, but too wet, not sunny enough and far too cold) we did nonetheless make quite a bit of hay. One field we got some mini-hestons made, the hay was too wet really and the bales got soaked the night they were baled (we brought as much in under cover as we could, and spread tarps over as much of the rest as we could.) BH worked those bales over the next couple of weeks and saved that hay. It didn't look particularly nice but the cattle liked it nearly best of all the hay we made last year.
So, whilst on a purely practical level you may be right that we should, like pretty much everyone else around here, sell the haybob, baler, sledge and carrier and make row upon row of shiny black plastic wrapped silage, we would so much prefer to find ways to carry on making hay. Our cattle cum hay shed is closed and we do mew the hay on pallets, so if we could just track down the type of fan that was used we could give it a go. You don't know any more about the fans, do you Robert?