Summer 2010
The Working Landscape
Bale Bonds
Threads of rural life entwined in haying
By Sky Barsch Gleiner
Photographed by Jon Vachon
Haying, like so much farm work in Vermont, yields a scenic beauty that only hints at the quiet drama behind it — a rich interplay connecting people, climate, animals, food and the rhythms of rural life.
“Haying involves a lot of different people,” says Bekah Murchison of Fair Winds Farm in Brattleboro. “There’s a community aspect to it — big gatherings, jolly, happy meals.”
Murchison sees the work of haying as a joyful rite of summer and says that it allows for a full, sensory experience. “There are all the different sounds. You’re standing in the wagon, surrounded by hay; you’re swimming in it. It smells beautiful.”
Haying is literally tons of work (see page 64), performed with the ultimate goal of storing enough feed for the times of year when animals cannot graze on grass.
As with any food preservation, the key is retaining as much nutrition as possible. The fight is against the factors that will allow bacteria to break down the hay: oxygen, heat and moisture. Proper storage techniques can ward off oxygen and heat for the most part, but moisture presents real problems.
A farmer needs roughly 40 hours of sunlight — about a three-day window — to thoroughly dry hay. And as anyone who has tried to plan a picnic or hike in Vermont knows, long stretches of rain-free days are hard to come by, not to mention predict. Although summer days are long, farmers can’t hay too early in the morning, as there is dew on the grass, or too late in the day, because the afternoon often brings thunderstorms.
Chris Dutton, a veterinarian and head of the agricultural program at Vermont Technical College, says farmers head to the fields in late May or early June for the first of what can be up to five cuttings, depending on geography, type of intended storage and luck with the weather.
“Unloading hay, you sweat, you are hot, you are hungry, but generally you are psyched,” Dutton says. “There is something very primordial about stacking food for winter. It is a visible accomplishment, combined with a feeling of safety.”
Dry Wit
With Vermont’s rapidly changing weather, haying is anything but cut and dried
Square bales
- Often used to feed horses because they can get seriously ill if they eat fermented foods, these types of bales aim to be “shatter dry,” or about 90 percent dry. During cutting, a mower with an attachment is adjusted to create the best chance for fast drying: tall, narrow rows if wind is in the forecast; flat, wide rows if sun will predominate. Another process for drying is called tedding: cut grass is spread evenly across the field, then flipped to facilitate further drying.
- The next step is raking. A raking machine combines the cut grass into large, wide rows in preparation for the baler. In square baling, a machine compacts the grass into neat rectangular bales, roughly two feet high, three feet long and two feet wide (they are not, in fact, square). This machine also wraps two pieces of twine around the bale, knotting them, and shoots the bale into a wagon or back onto the field. Horse hay sells for about $3.50 per bale in Vermont (an average-size horse eats less than a half-bale per day).
- This process is repeated as many times as possible throughout the summer. Farmers must wait for the plant to regenerate, usually about a month, balancing the risk of the hay getting rained on, or waiting too long and the plant maturing too much and the quality decreasing. Because of the immense amount of work and drying time needed, farmers making square bales typically have two cuttings per year.
Round bales
- The process of round baling begins like square baling, and very dry hay can be rolled into large unwrapped bales. However, once mown hay is at least 50 percent dry, it can be baled into a round shape and wrapped in plastic (balage), where it ferments.
- Cows, with their stomachs of steel (they have four), afford more flexibility with moisture content because they can digest fermented food, so balage and haylage work for cows.
- Depending on moisture content, balage can weigh up to 1 ton. A cow eating a mix of hay and grain eats about 35 pounds of hay or haylage per day.
- North of U.S. Route 2, farmers typically can get three cuttings per year; south of Route 2 but north of Route 9, four cuttings; and south of Route 9, five cuttings are possible, Dutton says.
Haylage
- To make haylage, plant matter is chopped after it dries, then stored in a silo or trench.
- In silo storage, haylage is blown up a large tube along the side of the silo and into the center of the silo, where the haylage compacts itself.
- In trench storage, haylage is spread in a trench and repeatedly driven over with a large tractor to compact it. It is then covered with a plastic tarp, which is held down usually with tires. The haylage is so compacted, it is difficult to dislodge even a small amount with your hands.
