Rain stops hay!

We are rained off

It’s always a stressful time when haymaking comes around.  We are glued to the weather forecast, looking frantically for that small window of sunshine when we will be able to cut the grass.

This year has been appalling, every single day, except one, the heavens have opened and the field has been drenched.

For the last few weeks we have all been weaving our way through the long grass on our morning walks.  We can’t play with the Pullers as they would quickly be lost.  In fact, we have lost the dogs on more than one occasion.

The shame of it is, that this year the grass looks fantastic and would make lovely hay, if only we had the opportunity.

Even with a day of sunshine, it’s not going to dry the ground enough to drive the tractor over.

We are trying to hold our nerve and wait until August to see if the weather improves but if it doesn’t we may have to ask our neighbour to make large round bales of haylage.  These will be wrapped in black plastic, therefore not needing to be dried.  We are really hoping we don’t have to go down this route as the large bales are difficult to handle and have a short shelf life once opened.

However, it would be better to have haylage that no winter food at all for our beasts!