Lately, the threat of rain has been ever present. The rain fails to fall most of the time, but clouds and thunder wrap the skies. It makes for good pictures.
But wet hay makes moldy hay.
Carrie found a deal for $6/bale delivered second-cut orchard grass. We paid $5.50/bale for a 'small' run of high quality first-cut we picked up in May.
Carrie ordered 400 bales to last us through next winter. Last year, we ordered 500 split between two deliveries for $8/bale delivered. We still have some of that left and we just got the other 100 bales, so 400 seems like a lot of hay, but we have twice the number of horses than had last winter (Our second boarder, Laura, showed up March 21 - Ellie showed up with Magic the next weekend).
(POST NOTE! I forgot about Kitty! She was our second boarder and came late January and left in April)
The hope is we're well stocked for what is to come.
However, we still had old hay to keep cycling through before it went bad. I rearranged the piles, staged, and moved over 30 bales into the barn to help make room for the new.
I had to do some rearranging in the barn and utilize behind the bathroom (Note to self - I threw the 250 lbs of sand Carrie wanted to use to simulate the weight of a rider there. Maybe one day we'll use it).
Carrie picked up 12 more pallets from her '$1 per' place for me to unload.
The pole barn needed some cleaning first. There was a 'Carrie-viction' pile.
A 'Carrie-viction' is when Carrie wants to clean something out and everything has got to go. Where it ends up? Irrelevant......at least until later.
It was later.
We had a pair of large boxes of patio furniture taking up space, too. I never put them together, because we had two sets of our other chairs (The first set was party damaged, so they sent us round two to make up for it).
The boxes were heavy and it needed to be assembled eventually, so it seemed as good a time as any.
I understood the instructions within seconds, but it required a lot more time and energy to do the deed. I get tired of using the little alan wrench by hand, so I decided to be creative.
"I can't be the first one to think of this," I thought.
I wasn't.
I looked it up on the internet afterward, but I was very proud of myself for the next chairs! There was a second wrench I could use for where the drill didn't fit and final hand tightening.
A mouse ran out from under the table's box when I got to work there. Loki never noticed it.
I noticed another little friend on my arm while working on a table leg.
The insect identifier app labeled it a dog tick. I didn't think my arms were that hairy.
I moved the furniture out piecemeal when it was done. I tried to get Shane to help some, but mainly forced him to remain present. He did a few things, but the majority of the time he laid about moaning over the heat. He had a drop of sweat while I looked like I'd been hit with the hose. Yet he couldn't understand my lack of sympathy for his plight....at that point, is it character building for him or for me? (You can't hear me laughing, but know that there are many Calvin and Hobbes references in my head as I say that!).
The last bit of 'cleaning' was to kill some wasps.
I was able to set the new pallets down at the end of it. Shane inspected how flat they laid.
Loki supervised and tasted the lumber for quality.
I started the process Friday and finished Sunday.
It was a sweaty, gradual process.
And then the hay didn't show up on Monday. The forecast was rain, rain, rain as a tropical storm moved up the coast line. Carrie called the supplier in a fit of worry Monday morning and handed me the phone to say, "Let's try again later."
In usual Scottsville fashion, the rain did it's own thing. It waited until late Monday to show up and then left instead of drenching us all day Tuesday.
The hay fleet showed up Wednesday.
'Only' two of the trucks were for us.
The first truck had hydraulics and I thought, "I bet Shane would enjoy this."
And he did! He had no idea the hay people were even around.
Shane's favorite part was the mini-conveyor belt. He would've gone for a ride if anyone let him.
It was a neat tool.
The guys clearly had unloaded multiple loads of hay in their lives. Little things they did I found clever. For example, in the 'hay line' one guy kept a bale of hay at his feet. The first guy would throw the hay onto the bale, so that he could pick it up and put it on the conveyor without bending over.
I had Shane do a little math. "400 bales of hay at 50 lbs a bale. How much hay are they moving?"
They hay was such a good price, because it had lambsquarter in it. It's a weed that has a woody stem horses won't eat. It's not potentially harmful like foxtail seeds. The horses will just eat around it and leave the branches, so Carrie figured some dead weight in every bale was fine for the price.
While this was happening, the farrier showed up. Meredith had room to squeak by, so Carrie and I divided up the duties. I stayed with the hay and she worked with the hooves.
I brought Shane down to visit and swapped out when Carrie did a final hay inspection.
If you thought the story ended with the hay being delivered, you were wrong. A storm was predicted overnight. Wind can hook rain into the pole barn, so Carrie wanted to hang a tarp for protection.
I shoveled out damaged and wet hay from the base of the pallets while she set up the ladder.
The tarp was the last step before we could call it quits. I was rooting on that storm to blow the heat away.
We wrapped the tarp into the pole barn for maximum protection. All we did was sink a few eye-hooks and use twine from old hay bales to tie it up. Carrie was still worried the bottom could get caught up in the wind and wanted to weigh it down before calling it a night.
Farm perk: It's okay to leave large things lying around. If you think something might come in handy one day, why not? It'd be work to get rid of it. You have the space.
Mission accomplished.
Farm work doesn't necessarily take a degree, but being clever helps. There are lots of things to keep track of and you're going to put time and sweat into taking care of them. It's not high margin work either, so any time you can save a buck helps, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment