Day 6: Farm Operations at Starlight Farm

Today, I helped bring in 250 hay bales from the field. After cutting, raking, and baling the hay, we pick up enough hay by hand to fill our barn. First, we stack the bales in a horse trailer, then we drive to the barn, unload them, and finally stack them again in the barn. Each bale weighs about 60 pounds, so it's a great workout....

Here's some of the equipment used to process hay at Starlight Farm. On the left is a tractor with a rake implement to sweep the hay into windrows, and on the right is the baler.


These gray clouds are very bad news; if hay gets rained on while it's in the field, it loses all nutritional value, destroying a whole Spring's worth of hard work and investment.

Every year, hay season is a stressful time because the hay has to dry for 2-5 days before it can be baled. If it rains hard in this time, all of the hay will be ruined.



We're expecting about 1,500 to 2,000 bales of hay from our 42 acres in production this year.

To learn more about the equipment used to produce hay, please visit my Picasa Web Album here.