The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: hexhammeasure on August 12, 2012, 10:29:16 pm
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despite the weather we finally managedd to get our main crop of haylage under wraps...and even managed to get 10 bales as hay!
95 4' bales and 10 4' hay bales off 14 acres a record for us... and so far it looks good!
How is everyone else managing?
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Good crops off the two fields we cut this week; mostly large round bales of hay and just a few small bales to get the baler up and running for the year. :fc: we get a chance to use it...
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Yea - congratulations! By some huge fluke, we have managed to get 3/3 fields off and about 600 + small bales of hay made and shifted before the rain came yesterday. It was close and we (fabulous friends and neighbours)were still selling off the field and shifting at 10pm, but done now!!! We sold most off field for £2.50 and kept some for later sale - hopefully a better price. Such a relief. :relief:
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Congratulations, Fi - it's a good feeling, isn't it! ;D
If you were still baling in the evening, you may have got a bit of dew on the bales - so just take a little extra care in storage (don't stack them too closely or too high, leave airgaps between heaps) until you are sure they're not heating.
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Got ours in last night, they are doing a lot of haylage up here at the moment. A friend of ours did 1200 small bales of haylage and sold the lot straight away. He is checking the rest of his land ::) to see if there is anywhere else he can cut as the demand is so high!
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this year winter forage is going to be an bad one again. farmers down in the south west and up north in some parts havn't even cut for hay yet and we now talking september. straw has also been under water, havn't grown so may be chopped instead of being baled.
so my advice is to buy in now and not later when the price has rocketed ;D
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Baled my final lot on Friday into big rounds, did most of it in July and got it without rain, beautiful hay, made nearly 2000 small bales and about 40 rounds. I'm so pleased its finished its dragged on this year. Sold what I don't have room for straight off the field, the rest, apart from what I need, I sell in winter when the price is higher.
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We are still wrapping and hoping to finish around 1 am tonight. Its my turn to come in and warm up a little. Part of me wishes we hadn't been forced to wrap, the other part is pleased I have the hay barn as extra lambing space. The only other window we had was during Royal Welsh week and all of our potential help was over at Builth so just knowing winter feed is secure is a good feeling.