Fighting a losing battle with the weather
We were very excited at the prospect of baling the hay from our newly reseeded field, but as usual, the weather has put a bit of a dampener on it. It needs to be hot and dry to ensure that we have plenty of decent winter fodder for our animals, but It has been neither of those things. In fact, it has been completely the opposite.
There have had a couple of very nice days but almost every single one of them has included rain at some point, either at the start or at the end.
The grass was getting long and thickening up nicely, with some beautiful seed heads breaking out – just crying out for cutting – but whenever we thought about taking the plunge, the heavens would open and rain on our parade!
In the end we felt we could wait no longer, and after a dryish couple of days we did cut it. Then, true to form and before we even got the mower back in the barn, the rain returned and refused to give us a break.
After a week or so we had another not-so-wet spell, and out came the wuffler to turn and fluff up the drying stalks. Once again, the rain came just as we were finishing off. It seemed like the tractor was persued around the field by a huge black cloud!
Despite this, we are still hopeful of a reasonable crop if we can hold our nerve. The hay is slowly drying out (between showers!), and if we can just string together 2 or 3 dry days, we might get away with it. But of course, that will depend on the weather…
