Gilbert learning to check the hay.

Rolls or square bales?

Is the dude takin a leak?

How many cuttings do you all normally get each year?

I thought you said you were dry? Looks like a big swath of Iowa is in pretty severe drought. Most people in my area only got 2 cuts on bermuda, and the second cut on fescue is only yielding 800ish pounds per acre. Pretty pathetic. Just this 1 little pocket in SW Missouri. No rain in the forecast, and I already culled 20% of the cows in July. I acted early so I won't be feeding hay early. 3 of 4 neighbors are feeding hay and the other has elected to let his tear the fences down or starve. Corn is getting chopped into silage. All the classic signs to know it's getting serious.

Yet everyday I hear about how Trump is causing record hurricanes... where is my moisture.

that's what I thought........

watch out kid !

3rd cut here yesterday ........

done for the year......

James, the hoop building is full these will be big rounds.

David, this is the fourth. Once we made a fifth cutting in October.

3x7 squares here

Three and done here...

He's posing for a new back glass sticker. Caption reads "Piss on cute blond kids"

We haven't started on the second cutting yet!



Ahhhh damn it!

Rancher neighbor got his third cutting of alfalfa baled and off the field the other day. Has the pivot sprinkler going again. I think he might get a fourth. Or, he's watering it to turn his cattle out on it as he does every year.

Sam how is the corn, have you chopped it?

We only get 3 cuttings around here.

It’s here in North Florida ! My yard is an uncuttable marsh at this point and there’s been little hay cut on the hay farm my friend gets his hay from. It’s going to be a real problem this winter to keep the horses and cows fed. Hay farmer usually cuts every couple weeks but can’t due to the rain every day.

I use too grow alfalfa and baled them in small square bales.

I miss the smell of it when cutting and baling and liked the rich green color.

They were hand picked up out of the field by me and that i don't miss.

If i start growing again i will go with the small round bales.

The money was good too.

I got 4 cuttings and never had much left in the barn.

At least I know where it is now. I thought I needed to start a thread to get the Texans to go out in the gulf and swim in circles, maybe jump start something. Lord knows we have enough Texans on the board to do it.

You guys that are talking about number of cuttings. What's your average rainfall? I figure Sam and Big Jim are getting 15 and 12 respectively, but I don't know exactly where they are. My corner of MO averages 43 inches.

I watered mine.

LJ, we (hopefully)get one cutting on dryland alfalfa/grass.

Our straight alfalfa is all flood irrigated and depending on growing conditions we get 2 cuttings, maybe 3 if you are lucky.


Just checked our annual rainfall here for NE MT.

Right at 12"/year.

4th cutting of alfalfa?

Cousin has 3 and ran out of storage, could be a fourth but doesn't have room to store it.
A bunch of the corn was really dry so that was picked in a couple fields. The ethanol plants are not taking nearly the corn this year so they have to get it in to the co-op before it runs out of room. I will probably hear what the moisture is this weekend when I'm up there. Beans are getting dry too.

Yes.

I started a construction job on Monday and today my cousin called and needed help chopping. Damn timing sucks.

It froze last week.


Waiting on the chopping crew....

Been a pretty average year around here
Rain-wise. I have taken my 5th cutting of
alfalfa and could get a 6th if temps
stay in the 80s for a couple more weeks
and we get one more decent rain.

The chitty part about trying to grow alfalfa right now is that the whitetail are eating it off about as fast as it grows.

Around the edges anyway.


And they are no doubt still living in the corn.


Walking around right now knocking off leaves.

Brings back nightmares. In west central Ks as a teenager in the 60 s, I picked up, hauled and stacked many thousand of the smaller square bales. Hard work and low pay.

Not this year,

But do you need someone to come remove a few alfalfa fattened whitetail?

I wonder about my rancher neighbor and his pivot field. At certain times of the year I've seen 30+ deer out there, usually winter when he has pulled the cows off it, and spring when it's just starting to grow fast again. I figure them things have to be eating equal to a bale or two a day, for months at a time. That's money out of his pocket.

I don;t think he even puts in for depredation permits for his family.

Hated it with a passion!

Might get two cuttings here this year.

If it'll rain a bit more, that is...

We've had one of the wettest summers on record here. My pastures are in the best shape they've been in since I got back in the cattle business. Of course, I've also spent a lot of money trying to make them that way. I'm only doing one cutting on hay, as I am planting wheat for hay, and that only yields one cutting, and I'll always cut one of the fields of fescue and clover, then use it for pasture. This year, I could have easily gotten a second cutting off the pasture field, as I didn't need it for pasture.

I have twice as much hay this year as I did last, and may even have some to sell if I go that route. I have some CRP ground coming out October 1, and I'm going to spray it down and reseed it for hay. My son and I are considering getting into the hay business, at least on a small scale, as there is a local hay man that's retiring this year, and there will be some hay ground available for the taking. We'll see how it goes, as we do need to utilize some of our equipment more than we do, but I don't want to work all the time either.

The hay cutting business here is always a risk in late spring and early summer, as it seems to rain about every 3 days. We have been very, very lucky in not having any ruined by rain, but it will happen sooner or later.

We got 5 cuttings this year, usually 4 is the norm.

Really enjoy the smell of a fresh cut field.

I got 4 in Ohio one time. Usually it was three... sometimes it was only two. Congratulations!

I was working the base camp equipment area on a large forest fire in Happy Camp California around 2008 (IIRC). We had hired quite a few locals to help out. Many had horses or other livestock. Hay was $20 a bale that summer.

Small square bales. Hard to imagine.

We finished 4th crop about 2+ weeks ago.. It was an average crop - not as good as 3rd crop..

Yesterday corn chopping was done by 2:30 pm.. Snapleage is next week.

6 cuts here.

My first job....................................

Hay making is a LOT, easier than it used to be!! Most all farm work is.

I got paid 3 cents a bale, and they fed us lunch..............small round bales, baled 'green and tight'. Timothy hay, not nice, clean alfalfa.

I spent a long, hot, summer north of Spokane loading hay bales on a dairy farm. Alfalfa bales up there weigh 95 pounds. Two of us were putting 1,000 bales in the barn in one day.

Good God what a brutal job.

Did small squares with the Kent trucks back in the 70s' . I remember June of 1978 we put up over 100k bales with three trucks. Lots of sudan grass alfalfa wheat straw and bermuda. Sudan would cut you up pretty bad literally dozens of light cuts on your forearms. Five cents a bale....

I was stacking hay there in Washington state in 1977. Nine cents a bale. Split by two guys. We put a thousand in the barn in a twelve hour day, I got $45. Cash!

I bought my first real motocross bike and a pickup from baling hay. Hard work for little pay.
All of my millennial kids were sent to family farms in the summer to learn what hard work is. Must have worked because they are all hard working successful adults now.

10 or 11 inches here.

No second cutting on dry land. Sometimes get some regrowth.....but its generally not worth cutting.

Land is so fragile.......taking the regrowth off is really hard on it.

No moisture since June.....until it rained an inch two weeks ago.

Somehow....my stupid corn grew.

Corn is an amazing crop!

Braggart!

Yeah...but it's one inch at a time......

That's restraint!

I thought it was poor farmer etiquette to brag about how great things are when others are in times of drought.

I didn't mind it so much. It was hard work, but I liked the extra cash. I think he was paying us about $2.00 per hour to pick up and stack in the barn. This picture was taken by the boss man when we brought the last load out of the field in 1977. I'm the guy on one knee up on top. Good times.

cheese wheel

Artisanal stacking!

That's all we get here too.

Drove past a smallish irrigated field yesterday and it looks like it's ready for a fourth cut. A larger non-irrigated field near it got only three, and it's now fallow. Very dry year here, like many other Western states.

I grew up on a farm and all my relatives were farmers. Which explains why I never was. It's a career you have to REALLY love.