Baling hay, and hoping for no rain

Before we moved here, the field had been farmer in either soybeans, or corn, for many years. We knew we didn't want to continue with that for a few reasons, but mainly because we like to do things as chemical free as possible, and aren't big fans of GMO's. Growing a big old crop of Genetically modified corn and beans didn't fit our life goals. We have 2 goats, and goats eat hay, so it made sense to go with hay. 

Normally, people spray roundup before planting. We didn't, and we will probably regret that decision. I'm hoping we don't. 

We planted alfalfa on half the field, and a pasture mix on the other half. 

When you're a hay farmer, you watch the weather closer than you ever have in your life, I think. We need a 4 day window of no rain in order to cut, flip, and bale. In July, you'd think that would be no problem. But of course, there have been rain threats nearly every day. Well, we finally got our chance, so we called up our neighbor and asked him to cut it. They said no rain until Wednesday, so we felt safe. 

You can never feel safe in regards to weather and hay. 

Tuesday was baling day, so I went to pick up the kids from my moms and was planning on heading back in the evening to help bale. But all of a sudden, at 1pm, thunder started and I freaked out. I watched the map, called all the local friends, and made sure it hadn't hit my house yet because I was an hour and a half away. We got so lucky. The neighbor rushed home from work to bale, and hubby rushed home to start stacking. I got the kids in the van as fast as I could and safely drove home. 😉

When I got here, I saw they were almost done baling and had begun collecting. Such a beautiful sight. 

The rain threatened, close. We hustled as fast as we could, stacked it as high as we could, got a tarp on, and hauled it to another neighbors barn. At 8pm we were done, the hay was safe, and we were tired. But we now have over 100 bales of hay, and that's a good feeling when you have livestock.