Making Hay

With a break in the weather we really jumped on making hay.  Every field has been cut and most have been raked.  We small squared the brome/timothy grass hay that we sell for horse hay yesterday and it looks great.  The best news is that the new square baler worked flawlessly and made some really pretty bales!  It never missed a knot or broke a string and it gobbled up some windrows that were huge without missing a beat.  The small square baler that we sold this spring was a source of much frustration, with the only positive that it had served to strengthen my vocabulary of expletives with my ability to string them together getting better every time we baled with it.  Today we'll small square bale in Spirit Lake, then run out to my brothers to large round bale there.  I expect that my alfalfa will be ready to bale tomorrow.  The hay to watch is the 50 acres of oat hay that I cut yesterday.  I've only tried to make oat hay once and the weather never cooperated so it became oats and straw.  This time we were able to cut it for yesterday and it was cut at boot stage which basically means that the oat head is still inside of the plant.  The plant is filled with moisture so drying this down will be interesting to watch.