Ode to Hay

We’re fully into fall in Texas, and finally getting some good not-summer weather, and it seems like a great time to talk about something that has ascended to pretty much the highest priority around here – hay!

The family that owned our property before us grew and harvested native bluestem grass hay – a high quality forage for livestock, and as we’ve increased our own herds, we’ve augmented some of our pastures with coastal/giant bermuda grass as well – ideal for equine and bovine grazing and harvesting in our southern climate.

This year, Ronnie spent a good portion of the spring and summer months seeding, fertilizing, weed- killing, cutting, drying, and baling not only our hay fields, but also fertilizing, cutting and baling for some friends and immediate neighbors and, as always, we’ve learned so much!

In a nutshell, we can get several “cuttings” from our hay fields each growing season – weather dependent of course (wetter seasons or drought seasons will affect the number of cuttings you can get in one growing season) – the more cuttings you can get out of growing season (and each cutting differs in quality/nutrients/texture of hay), the more bales you’ll accumulate for the cooler months when your pastures are not growing. Each cutting offers different values for equine needs, so if you’re interested in more about that, read this.

From watching seedlings come up around our pastures (yes, in the longer evenings of summer, we’d sometimes enjoy coming home at the end of the day, walking the pastures and literally “watching the grass grow” – taking pics of whatever was sprouting and ID-ing it as indeed the type of seed we had planted – so exciting – hahaha!), to long days (ie., Ronnie fitting hay duties in after a regular long workday), planning around weather in order to get hay cut, flipped and dried in time to be baled before rain, determining moisture content of bales (did you know hay bales can spontaneously combust and that wet hay can be a riskier situation than dry hay?), learning best practices for hay storage, dealing with unexpected tractor issues and implement fixes, hay management from start to finish has given us some valuable rural life experience. Really makes you appreciate the process and the people that did this for generations before!

Enjoy my little hay-hailing TikTok featuring the 4J barn gang! 🙂