The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Pasture Farm on February 07, 2012, 01:51:17 pm
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Last year i stored 22 5ft round bales inside the barn ontop of old pallets two on the bottom then one on top in the middle.
My question is they take up so much room inside is there anyway I could store them outside. Its cut turned a few times to dry then baled and put inside i have no means of wrapping them. If i stored them on top of pallets would they be ok under a large tarpauline or would they rot with no air flow if i stored them outside.
Sheep feed is all its used for
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Years ago, there was no bale wrap, balers or small /large bales. What did folk do then? Find out how to rick your hay, there may be someone nearby who remembers how.
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if the hay is baled in good dry conditions it could be stored outside it would need to be covered with polythene then a tarpaulin on top if there are any dips in the covering water will collect and waste the hay if a tarpaulin is used only
i doubt if anybody would be alive and able to stack loose hay as they used to it was thatched with wheat straw to make it waterproof the last i saw hay stored this way was in the early sixty's small square balers were common then as was an Allis Chalmers round baler that made small round bales it was the handling of them that proved there demise even in the days of steam engines there were balers wire tied ones at that :farmer:
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I find small bales easier to store (can go in nooks and crannies), move and use I must admit.
You could go the tarp method outside but I think you might end up with quite a bit of wastage, may be worth trying with half the bales the first year and see how it goes, at least then if it doesnt work you still have half left all nice inside.
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Sounds as though im going to have to struggle for room until that lotto number comes up and a bigger barn can be built :thumbsup:
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i doubt if anybody would be alive and able to stack loose hay as they used to
Actually I have made loose hay for the past four years and stacked it the same as it used to be, and I am only 20
I was shown and helped by my father.
Philip
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Well done you :thumbsup: These skills may well be needed in years to come and shouldn't be forgotten. :farmer:
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singing shearer is that stored inside or out side :farmer:
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Outside, and we don't thatch the stacks either.
I try to learn as many of the traditional crafts and skills as possible so that they don't get forgotten.
Traditional skills also tend to be a cheaper alternative than the more modern ways.
Thanks,
Philip
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traditional skills i don't think are a cheaper alternative the traditional skills were from an era that had plenty of willing men whomen and children to do the manual work a working horse was valued more than a man
i really don't see a return to that system of farming on either a large scale or pottering about
your hay stack needs at least 3 people one forking from trailer to stack another forking on the stack and another tramping it down that can be reduced to two with sheaves of grain
just take baling hay with a small square baler after you have baled it you are faced with building the bales up into 17 teens or 21ones
the biggest cause of death in the good old days of manual work was exhaustion no god damn wonder the idyllic way of life that everybody aspires to today was a complete drudgery no wonder the agric workers left in there droves to go to factory's and fight in the wars
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Sorry Robert,
I totally disagree. We manage to make the hay and stack it with just two people but I could manage on my own if I had to, it would just take longer but as my time is my own, that doesn't bother me.
If, as you say, exhaustion was one of the biggest cases of death then how do you explain the hundreds of hard working men and women who lived long lives - some around us are over 90 and they have worked for most of their lives?
Traditional farming methods are making a comeback on smallholdings all around the UK as they find that they ARE a cheaper and sometimes better alternative to the modern ways.
Take for example my profession of shearing, hand shearing expenses are just that of the shears and the stones for sharpening, machine shearing expenses are that of the machinery which is much higher plus the electricity and maintenance.
Thanks,
Philip
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so shearing is your forte which one can you do the fastest hand or electric on a per sheep basis and on a daily throughput :farmer:
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Obviously with the machine, around 2-300 per day. With blade shears probably around 100 to 150 per day but blade shearing gives a better quality fleece due to the fact that there is less double cut than with the machine and blade shears cut the wool cleanly rather than smashing the fibres, also the cheaper running costs.
There are also advantages in that the sheep have a protective covering of wool rather than being almost bald.
Philip
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i think you have talked your self out of that debate 100% more throughput with modern method but you could use the old hand cranked shearing machine that way you only have a coolie to crank the bloody machine and still get the throughput :farmer:
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Actually ;D hand cranked machines are slower than electric.
As with hay the old methods suit smaller scale farms and the modern methods suit large farms with more land to spread the cost over.
Philip
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the big difference betwean you (singing shearer)and myself is age you are 20 i am 58 you are young and able in days gone by the ideal candidate for a farm labourer when i was younger than you i could fill a john Deere ep 10 rotospreader and empty it in 20 minutes give me a graip now and ask me to do it you will be told to go forth and multiply all these old ways i have done them and would not go back to them i will not be able to ask you when you are 58 if you prefer the modern to the old ways of conserving crops
it is good that you can do all these backbreaking labour intensive jobs enjoy them while your body can still function :farmer:
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I would hope at 58 I will still be going strong, what a coincidence my dad is 58 and he is still out working every day and helps me with the hay, he works just as hard as me if not harder at times and enjoys it.
Philip
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The old ways may not make commercial sense but needs must! We dont have a tractor, or infact any sort of useful off road vehicle or trailer (We used our fiat scudo van during hay making this year, much to the utter disbelief of our neighbours!). Id love one, but I cant imaging how we would get together the money to buy one with associated equiptment and run it. Last year our lovely neighbour cut and baled our hay for us and I hope he will continue to do so, but I am practicing with my lovely scythe in case not! I can manage about an acre (in many hour long bursts!), so if I eat my weatabix maybe I could work up to the required 8? but the baling and moving would be a struggle - I shall be picking your brains on stacking the old way if you can fit our sheep in, Singing Shearer! We managed to sell our surpless off the field this year, but I think I will try storing more this year so thanks for thread.
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Interesting discussion with good points on both sides. I'm with SS with hand shearing to get as good quality fleece as possible, but where the big sheep owner just needs the wool off, or it's going to the Wool Board for carpets then machine clipping is quicker, therefore cheaper. For very small scale sheep keeping I see no place for machine shearing at all.
Being even older than Robert :o (just) I can remember when we had a dozen men working on a small farm which now would not support a single worker full time. We had some mechanisation in the form of tractors, combine, implements, no horses as post war, but all jobs such as hedging and ditching, beet singling, mucking out, were done by hard manual work. Our men were worn out before their time by modern standards, but compared with a hundred years earlier they had it easy.
We built our stacks of bundled straw by hand, and thatched with the same straw. I remember it as fun and I think it was a high spot for the men too. They knew how to pace themselves (when my Dad's back was turned) but that is the way to get the work done - slowly but continuously.
I can remember having lots of energy and being able to put in a never-ending day, but nowadays, when most farmers are over 60, that energy is gone and a bit of mechanisation is wonderful.
What neither of you has mentioned is that as we run out of oil, and SS you will be around when this happens, we will have to go back to some of the 'old ways' of manual work using more people. There are so many unemployed people in Britain that a bit of manual work for them would surely be one answer to both problems.
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(I do wish that when I've typed a diatribe, read it through and corrected things, then clicked on send, a message wouldn't come up saying I may like to review my message :'()
Here I go again!!!!!
Robert!! I'm sure you wouldn't really like the traditional methods of agriculture to die out. (apart from working employees to death :o) No-one knows when these skills will be needed. Probably not in our lifetime and maybe not in our grandchildrens, but sometime.
I have the feeling that you are finding the winter a bit tedious and like to spice things up with a bit of of a row ;)
I remember wire wrapped bales and the bloody welts on your hands after a day carrying. Hemp twine was kinder and had many uses afterwards, halters, doormats and such but this awful plastic stuff that's useful only for a day or so, I find annoying.
Anyway, back to the point! I'm sure you wouldn't really like to see such skills as hand shearing, thatching, dry-stone walling, hedge-laying, ditch digging etc. lost?
Lill find him some hedging and ditching to do ;D
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I remember wire wrapped bales and the bloody welts on your hands after a day carrying. Hemp twine was kinder and had many uses afterwards, halters, doormats and such but this awful plastic stuff that's useful only for a day or so, I find annoying.
I don't like to disagree with you Sylvia, but most farmers and smallholders I know wouldn't know what to do without the year's supply of pink string off the hay and straw bales! I am never without some, it holds most gates on our farm shut fast and cow- and pony-proof, keeps sacks of feed closed on the quad bike; I've used it as a makeshift belt, shoelaces, dog lead, horse halter, tow rope, it ties the lambing hurdles together to form the lambing pens, hobbles a lamb in the trailer so that mum will jump in to it ... We collect and save ours and give the odd sackful to horsey folk who use big round bales of hay and no longer have copious amounts of baler twine to use for the rest of the year.
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Sylvia when i was at college we had to keep a diary of the work done one guy every day for 3 months digging ditches
if the old methods die out they will be revived when and if they are ever needed again there are stacks of books written from the 1830s about agriculture and how to improve it
fleecewife yes farms used to have a large labour force some even up to 40 workers imagine a farm today employing 40 men even at the minimum wage that is some wages bill for not much return
as to oil running out they have the technology for engines to run on water no not steam but the oil companies hold the patents on it how are we going to bail out Europe if we are not taxed on oil
thatching just love the chocolate box houses down in illiminster
dry stone walling still going you come and lift the stones that are in the walls here you will get a hernia very envious of people that have flat stone to build walls with
hedge laying is on the increase with the grants to pay for the labour intensive reconstruction
ditch digging that is more in line for me now where is that trapezoidal bucket for that excavator with bog tracks fitted with a heater and radio 1 ;) :thumbsup: :farmer:
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forgot about the baler twine heard of the old guy that used twine for everything so when it was his funeral the coffin lid was tied down with yes you guest it baler twine ;) :farmer:
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I find it easier to learn from a person who has spent years learning and has actually had experience in doing something rather than someone who has read a book and thinks that they are some sort of expert.
Also methods differ from county to county and from person to person, someone from Devon will lay a hedge different to someone from Yorkshire.
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back to the hay.
How long will the hay keep in a dry barn with good ventilation. I inherited some and wonder if I can give a bit to the pigs.
Any thoughts?
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Sally, do you remember hemp twine? It was not only useful for all the things you mentioned but rotted down in the dung heap as well. I admit I wouldn't like a life without baler twine, my pockets are always full with it. They do say that without it half of the world's farm machinery would come apart and all it's fences would fall down ;D I can well believe it!
It's just the way plastic twine shreds in no time and what to do with it then? Put it into landfill :( (and you couldn't make a kitchen mat from it! ;D ;D)
Robert my neighbour( who can do everything, he's just built a beautiful eco-house and..........If he wasn't so nice I could hate him ;) has, with his young son built a dry-stone wall to the entrance of his farm, well, not so much a dry-stone wall as a Devon bank, which takes as much skill. It's a thing of beauty.(and not a hernia in sight ;))
My elder son is a dab hand at cutting and laying a hedge ,as is my brother, they do it for the love of it.
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back to the hay.
How long will the hay keep in a dry barn with good ventilation. I inherited some and wonder if I can give a bit to the pigs.
Any thoughts?
Have a sniff of it, MAK, if it smells good and not musty then it's fine.
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it is whin stone or dolerite heavier than granite i worked with a dyker years ago he came from peebles and his men came from dumfries the first think he warned them about was the weight of the stones they are hernia inducing
the Devon bank is that the same as was shown on countryfile last sun
hay if stored dry will keep for years it usually draws damp from the bottom that is why some people put pallets down also if it is next to walls it draws the damp from them
my pigs wont touch hay they prefer straw :farmer:
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Shelf life of hay......
Thanks all. All I have to do is to climb up onto the first floor of the barn , position wooden planks over the bits of the floor that have collapsed and twinkle toe over to the hay. I even have a pitch fork to dump some in a large cardboard box before the return trip , down a ladder, out the barn, through the snow, over the electric fence then back into the barn/piggery.
Its A Knockout Again !!! :trophy:
:wave:
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Shelf life of hay......
Thanks all. All I have to do is to climb up onto the first floor of the barn , position wooden planks over the bits of the floor that have collapsed and twinkle toe over to the hay. I even have a pitch fork to dump some in a large cardboard box before the return trip , down a ladder, out the barn, through the snow, over the electric fence then back into the barn/piggery.
Its A Knockout Again !!! :trophy:
:wave:
are you going to be dressed in padded national costume then? Can we come and watch?
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dressed up ?
mmmmm Ski boots, several layers, 2 scarves, hat and even man gloves so I guess I look a bit Michelin or those Jeux Sans Frontieres giants from Ghent.
Ran out of water so we are drinking copious amounts of wine and beer ( home made cider is probably frozen in the barn) so sitting here with a scarf and hat in front of a few smouldering logs seems funny - dressed to kill! :wave:
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I have to say that Robert is mostly right in this thread. It was idyllic in the mind of the well-fed watcher, not to the labourer whose life expectancy was well short of the guy in the air-conditioned tractor today.
Some knowledge of the skills and techniques will remain because some remain valid or come back into fashion, but health and safety and minimum wage will favour hydraulics over muscles.
I'm laid up for a couple of weeks, but the workload hasn't got any easier to compensate. It's different when the years catch up. My boys, when they come home, don't open gates, they just jump them. Ten years ago I might have thought about doing the same. Now I just do more gate maintenance.
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That is your opinion, there is enough room for traditional and modern methods.
Many people will choose a tractor over manual labour any day but there are people who like me enjoy hard work and feel a sense of achievement after a job well done.
Traditional methods require skills which are dying out thanks to mechanisation, if these skills are lost it will be a great shame.
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Singing Shearer, I agree totally. The lovely thing about living now is that you can enjoy hard work when you are young (I thought nothing of working a 14-16 hour day of hard work, keeping up with the men, when I was young) but when it gets too much, no-one expects or asks you to work too hard these days. Long may it last :)
Small Farmer, my younger son also jumps over our five-bar gate, never opens it. I was telling my neighbour about this, he is a 47 year old office worker. He showed me he could do it as well!! It's as much as I can do at 60 odd to CLIMB over a gate now :( :(
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i make bespoke sash windows by hand, the old fashioned way, planes and chisels, wedges and dowels. i could buy a machine to do it all for me, i found one that could make a sash from stock timber in 8 minutes, but i can gaurantee it wouldnt last as long or be as good quality because machines cant 'read' the material, spot how the grain is running or account for flaws such as knots in the timber.
im sure this is the advantage of hand made over mechanised, being able to control the quality of a process.
i taught myself from my grandads old books, dating back to 1930, and im forever repairing more modern machine made windows because they just dont last because they werent made right in the first place. the oldest window ive restored was 270yrs old and is still in use in its original condition today, but the amount of 30yr old windows ive had to rip out and replace is what keeps me in buisness.
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Hi deepinthewoods,
Good to hear, people are starting to realise that you may pay a little more for a proper craftsman/woman made item but it will probably last many more years than machine made.
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Re the hay. The years before we had some stock of our own I let a local farmer cut and take our hay (I know, I know, but we were desperate to get it cut). One year there was so much still laying in the field, and I hate waste, so I dragged a big builders bag around and filled it with loose hay. I filled several bags and the hay stored really well in a shed on pallets. We used it up to 2 years later and it was fine. Now a friend bales our hay using a decrepit old baler, and I follow on collecting the loose stuff. The builders bags are great to tug along, and seem to be breathable.
We also use the old sisal twine for baling and I plait it into ropes when I open a bale. When the fencing contractor saw me plaiting baler twine he was in hysterics as he hadn't seen anyone making ropes for 40 years!
The days of leaping gates are long gone for me too.
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how do you cope with the joints on the twine every 6 feet when twisting rope :farmer:
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How blessed we are to have the luxury of choosing automation or manual labour :)
Emotionally I am with SS, how much nicer a day's work with hay out in the air, feeling the sun on one's back, the ache of honest toil in one's muscles and honest sweat on one's brow.
But when, as last so-called 'summer', we had only one 6-day window in which to make all our forage, how lucky we can also instruct the contractor to come and round bale the other 14 acres while we enjoy working through the 6 we can manage in small bales! :D
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sally what a lovely picture you have outlined and one i am sure everybody visualizes as them when they get a piece of land only some can see the futility and drudgery of it there are as many posters on here that also wish for that mechanical boost to there daily tasks having done both i will stick with the mechanical version
it would not do if we all thought the same or acted the same :farmer:
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How blessed we are to have the luxury of choosing automation or manual labour :)
I agree. Maybe sometimes the scale of what we are doing, am mount of land, numbers of animals etc dictate a lean to mechanical help. We chose to do things on a smallish scale so that we can keep fit and get closer to the land and past ways. Oh - and I am essentially mean and would rather get up at 06:00 to dig the veg plot than buy a rotavator. OH just echoed that I am very mean !
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We chose to do things on a smallish scale so that we can keep fit and get closer to the land and past ways.
Some people pay a gym subscription to keep fit, those of us who choose manual labour don't have to. ;D
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Im with Robert 99.99999% I dont do work if the tractor or anything else i have purchased can do the job for me.
So can i keep hay outside or not ??? ??? without breaking into a sweat and employing half the villlage ;D
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yes you can pallets under it to stop drawing dampness build the stack in a triangle and cover with polythene with a net over it or a tarpaulin to weigh it down(built in a triangle to shed water off ) :farmer:
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BSG Tractors in Colchester used to sell an pyramid frame to build a stack against but it cost an arm an a leg. Someone handy with a welder could make one for a lot less.
When you get to my age - the same as Robert - you don't always have a choice when it comes to physical labour. So I came out of hospital on wednesday with a handy leaflet saying take lots of rest and no heavy lifting for a month. Then Friday night went down to -15C here in the soft south and all the drinkers froze, the diesel in the tractor turned into wax, the drains stopped working and all the animals had to be looked after.
Less the ache of honest toil and more the completely ****ing knackered after 8 hours in the fields. Age puts limits on what you can do.
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Hi,
The tripods where more for drying hay in the field or other forage crops which take more drying such as oats and vetch or lucerne, it wouldn't work with a stack though.
Philip
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singing shearer the original poster said it was round bales they wanted to store outside
the tripods were used for hay and have done this oats were stooked for drying/ripening usually 4 each side stooked at an angle before being brought in to stack the oats were more than likely cut when still green or just on the turn
tripods were also used by people that could not build stacks there was a neighbour that used to have stacks that resembled oast house roofs with the steam coming out them as well :farmer:
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Robert,
I know, oats for grain where stooked like other cereals, but bulky crops of oats and vetch or tares as they were known where often dried on tripods.
Philip
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we have a "museum" farm near us and they still have the circles of stones outside where the hay was stored and stacked in the 50's. i presume aslong as its off the wet itl be ok and ud expect a bit of spoiling on the outside. once its baled rather than stacked then it would need a cover.
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how do you cope with the joints on the twine every 6 feet when twisting rope :farmer:
It's called splicing, Robert!
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we have a "museum" farm near us and they still have the circles of stones outside where the hay was stored and stacked in the 50's. i presume aslong as its off the wet itl be ok and ud expect a bit of spoiling on the outside. once its baled rather than stacked then it would need a cover.
We had "staddle stones" in our "mowey" on our childhood farm Princess P. Lots of folk wanted to buy them as garden ornaments but Dad always said no, you never know when you might need them again :)
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we have a "museum" farm near us and they still have the circles of stones outside where the hay was stored and stacked in the 50's. i presume aslong as its off the wet itl be ok and ud expect a bit of spoiling on the outside. once its baled rather than stacked then it would need a cover.
We had "staddle stones" in our "mowey" on our childhood farm Princess P. Lots of folk wanted to buy them as garden ornaments but Dad always said no, you never know when you might need them again :)
"Hareshowe" -this museum farm was bought from an old lady - by the council and they literally moved the whole house and farmyard to a new field a few miles to Aden Park, up by us. they put it all back together again, including ornaments, furniture, chicken coops, midden etc
its a great place, old or not. id love to live there! theres a gas incubator that the blind society gave to the ww1 veteran so he could make a few bob.
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We also use the old sisal twine for baling and I plait it into ropes when I open a bale. When the fencing contractor saw me plaiting baler twine he was in hysterics as he hadn't seen anyone making ropes for 40 years!
I enjoy plaiting the band as well, with a few different colours to play with I've made some very nice leads for the goats, using clips for about 80p from the pets shop, looped back and spliced well in (using a rug rug hook). also great for making non choking slip leads for goats and dogs. and much better for tying gates up than just the single strands?
- and now back to storing hay :D
I like making hay by hand, but it's heartbreaking seeing the clouds rolling in and trying to row up yet again, got a contractor in last year, left the smaller area hay that I'd been working, the contractor brought most of 'his' it in too soon, mine would have been better :(.