Hay Making 2014

The year of 2012 we had awful weather,  2013 was not great but we did manage to make 71 big bales of hay, and then went on to make 280 small bales of hay. But neither of these were really good hay, it was full of  stalks which the sheep don't like so a lot of hay was wasted

	We made a total of 91 big bales of haylage this year from Upper lodge field (25 bales) and Good Field (66 bales) thanks again to Jon Clarke and his men who  turned up when they said.
The start of mowing New Barn field
	The first bale home! It was followed by a another 499 and 1/2 bales (the bale left in the bale chamber) yes a total of 500 bales of convectional hay with no plastic wrapping to get rid off. We tried to use the bale sledge but it kept jamming so the bales had to be picked up by hand again.
	The 500 bales all stacked and safely in for the winter

Claire doing the last of the baling in New barn Field	To check that the Hay is not "heating" which can lead to fires which leads to no hay or barn, we insert copper pipes into the stack, which we can pull out to feel for heating  - the sieve is so people don't walk into the pipe.