Hay Delivery

Two SPED teachers dropped by at 7 AM Wednesday morning. They work for Rockingham County Schools, but have a hay business on the side. Carrie was up early to make sure the gate was open and pulled me outside for introductions after I woke.

We ordered 300 bales. They delivered early, so they could still make it in to school. "We told our Principal we'd be late!"

They must've been on the road by 5 AM. If they didn't load the night before, that would've been a rough morning!

Both men worked with older students and even post graduates. They helped them learn skills where they could be groundskeepers and custodians and maybe even work for the school division. The tiny house project sounded really neat, too.

I would've tried to talk more, but they were shifting into a rhythm. We didn't want to hold them up from getting to work, so Carrie, Loki and I went inside.

They were done a little after 8 AM. 

The hay was first-cut. Carrie said it was great quality. First-cut hay can be 'more stemmy' and 'less leafy' than second-cut. 

"There are those farmers who give first-cut hay a bad name, but it has more protein than second cut," the man said. "Probably 90% of our hay requests are second-cut. I give them what they want, but a lot of the smart people want first cut."

Believe as much of that as you will. The '90% wanting second-cut' jives with what Carrie's always said, but a good salesman does his best to make a customer feel like they got a steal of a deal, too!

The hay was $8.50/bale delivered and stacked. We could pick up the bales from them at $5.50 a bale, I think. Carrie said their farm was up past Harrisonburg. We can only trailer about 100 bales at once with weight limits on the truck with the trailer, but we might try it some time. 

Especially if I can put a teenage Shane to work one day. Throwing bales is a decent taste of hard work.

I had to move 100 bales Monday to get ready for the delivery.

We had 89 bales left from the lambs quarter order. We've been using that in the dry lot feeders. There were still 8 bales left from our first hay delivery we're stuffing bags in stalls with. 

The trickiest part of moving all the bales was the maneuvering across pallets of uneven lengths and broken boards. 

Carrie's goal has been to find a steady hay supplier. We've tried three different places. The first place was past Lynchburg and there was a shortage of supply. We took what we could get. We got a 100 bales from two guys in Louisa, but Carrie said they had been operating under radio silence ever since. The bales with lambs quarter came at a great price, but we decided the time investment killed the deal. That guy's standard hay went for $11 or $12 a bale, so it was out of our price range.

This hay seems top quality. If it is, Carrie hopes to keep in contact and make these guys our yearly suppliers.