I Think It's Going to be a Dry Summer - Buying Hay and Loading up the Barn
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- Опубліковано 7 чер 2023
- It's been very dry, and I'm not taking any chances of running short on hay.
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For those wondering, I paid $40/bale for this hay.
Alan I’m here in southeast tx. If you ever need 4x5 I sell it for 60 a load
I was just going to ask how many boogers we’re talking about.
Here in NW Missouri hay currently is at $60 a bale but most of the farmers around me are not gonna sell anymore,They are thinking a hot and dry year also with no other cuttings
Excellent thinking Pete and planning ahead. With them dry do you wonder what the feed value is they look good
That's cheap. It's about $110/each here in northeast Texas
Meteorological summer officially begins when Pete busts out the jorts.
Pete, you've got fantastic neighbours! At $40 a bale you can sleep very soundly knowing you have what you need and have paid a fair economical price to secure your heard. I remember listening to cattle farmers from Texas last year being charged $250 -$400 per bale because water was so scarce and drought hit them hard. The poor farmers had to cull most of their longhorns because they just couldn't afford to feed hay. My heart goes out to all the farmers....its a hard and sometimes thankless job but so very vital. Without you guys, there would be no life. God bless you, Hillary and the kids. All the best from the UK 🇬🇧
Your correct if you buy from a feed store or big name place. At this time 6-8-23, we are paying $150 from our local guys. Its better hay than junky first cuts down here. (North Texas) you gota watch out for junky first cuts that carry the seeds of weeds & stickers. This year is gona be a good cut for me. Gettin rain cycles ok so far....😊
@@markcunningham6086 Hi Mark, I'm so pleased you will be ok with feed this year. The weather systems are so messed up around the world this year. I haven't had rain for 3 weeks. Had blue skies and lovely warm weather. That's very unusual for my part if the UK but I wont complain about it. Take care and all the very best for your future hay production 😁👍🏻🌞
I can almost smell the hay from here! 😉The red wagon is great, you & your father did a good job with that!!
Yes, I forgot to say, 'Tip of the hat to him!'
Pete, I look forward to viewing this video, but wanted to let you know I appreciate you doing these videos. While you enjoy your work most of the time, you said something in the previous video that made me think, while I enjoy and reminisce watching these videos you are often working hard! From the bottom of my heart THANK YOU!!! You are valued. Murfreesboro TN
Oh, I forgot I was also going to say you are smart to go ahead and buy now and beat the rush to find the hay that's left an not pay high prices for it ! I hope you have a BLESSED DAY Pete !!!
Smiled as you talked about square bales, was a BALE BUCKAROO as a youngster, no kicker, throw/stack on flat wagon. 👍💪🙏
Here in NE Nebr the guys used to go out bucking bales, we're Native and our skins brown fast😅. They were so muscular and brown, ready for football practice 😊. Good memories 🥰
Hello Dale it was nice to see you on Petes Channel.....
A big hearty hello to Dale
No wind here (06790), just smoky for the last 4 days
That hay wagon you and your Dad built sure is paying for itself !!!
It’s sooooo nice 🤩I didn’t realize it could go out on the street🥰
Moisture Content being lower:
I went to Beef Field a few years back hosted by the University of Tennessee where they fed a group of steers with conventional "dried" hay vs. wrapped haylage.
Both style rolls were harvested out of the same field. One group was fed dry hay the other group haylage. I was surprised by the results!
The protein content was vitally the same, the rate of gain was vitally the same with 2 groups!
The only 2 difference was the water consumption was greater on the group of steers being fed the dry hay. And that there was more waste with the haylage due to spoilage.
The university conclusions was that Dry hay cut at the right time, at the right protein level was just as good and a heck of a lot cheaper to harvest!
Good luck....Hope ya get some rain too!
We had like a 30 minute thunderstorm just this morning. But, I don’t live on a farm. Prayers you get some rain soon. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thanks for the math between round and square bales and the HUGE difference in labour. Amazing!!!
You can never have enough Hay on Hand, it will be a dry Year for Sure and being prepared for the worse Case Scenario is always good 👍
It's always a good idea to be prepared and love the cyclones tee-shirt.
Yep ! I can relate to all of this video. been there done that, but not from a Farming standpoint. As I've mentioned before I was a Hay Dealer for years and 330 small bales would hve been a load on my little 6 wheeler, and close to a third of a load on my 18 Wheeler. I ran more loads with the 6 wheeler most stables that I drew into could not handle (not enough mow space) for trailer load. Drew most of it from the finger lakes region, on up to Watertown and closer to home. average year? 50-55 thousand bales. And I remember back in 75 there was a Drout, mostly out west we hauled a lot of Hay to Amsterdam to the rail yards to help the farmers out there. Good years and bad years. thanks for sharing Pete. ECF
Hi Ellis, I would love to meet you someday to hear the stories you have of the farms around us back in the day.
Great to see the bale wagon your Dad made is working great.
I entirely agree. Feed in the Barn is sweet dreams at night.
That's such a good wagon that You and your Dad constructed.
food security, for ourselves and our animals, equals peace of mind
Hay in the barn is like money in the bank. Thanks for sharing.
As a kid, I remember with fondness bumping along on the hay rack when dad helped my uncle with bailing hay. Love the smell of the hay field!
The farmer that bales sixth acres of hay around use just now cut part of it way late. He wraps them in plastic. We hate it. He leaves a mess and isn’t a very good farmer. He pays my 92 year old mother-in-law 2500. For the year. If we had our say it wouldn’t be happening. But love seeing it when its down and being able to watch all the critters. This to shall pass. Love seeing how farming should be done. Thank you!
It is dry almost everywhere. Lucky we have enough hay to get by. Praying for rain. Maybe while watching you I will perform a rain dance??
It’s amazing to get that work done in 3 hours.
I feel about herbs the same way A Few Acres Farm feels about hay. You can never have too much on hand because eventually it will all be used.
Great advice Pete, y'all are smart. Praying for rain . I watch a small farmer in Tennessee and she said they are in a drought too. 😢 Lord please send the rain to these small farmers, water is essential for life. In Jesus name amen
I am not religious, but despite that the portion of the Lord's Prayer that says "give us this day our daily bread" really resonates with me. It's something no human being should ever take for granted!
Not surprising it's part of the greatest prayer invented in world history.
I love that you’re supporting your neighbors and they support you… That’s amazing ❤️.. Keep it up!
No way the first time I've ever seen Pete with shorts😂😂❤
We feed a lot of cow cake and maybe a semi load worth of square bales. We ran an average of 600 cows on 64k acres. Hard work but I miss it.
As usual, Pete.........a GREAT video! So glad you have your hay in. Now, if we get a moist summer, there will be another cutting for you. Here in Maine, we have had several days of rain....(on and off).....Everything is lush and green. Bev in Maine
Kind of reminded me of our toilet paper hoard during the Pandemic...all those round bales!😉
It was very dry and crunchy here also, with wildfires all over the place. And then June 1-7 we got over 3 inches of rain. Yikes.
Those bales remind me of growing up eating Shredded Wheat for breakfast.
Nice hay wagon! Nice hay. Those will be some happy cattle.
I dont usually comment but, here in New Zealand we have just gone thru the wettest summer I can remember. The weather is certainly doing weird things the last few years
Thanks for including the sizes and weights. Interesting comparing that to my dad's numbers in western Montana.
A farmer gentleman in NC keeps muttering the same thing. He thinks it will be a dry year. I live in the NM high desert and I’m thinking the weather patters are already strange. Two to three weeks too soon to go into summer, yet here we are Last year it rained early too, but a bit less than normal.
i enjoyed this video, Made me think about my brother putting up square bales as a teenager on neighboring farms. It was hard work but it prepared him for life. He graduated from high school. Joined the Navy in 1966. Graduated from college. Raised a family. He learned alot throwing square bails on the back of a wagon. Thanks for reminding me of him.
@@cassandrafinny yes
It’s dryer than a popcorn fart down here in north central Pa too. Very wise to have purchased that hay Pete!
Morning Pete, family, and farm. The barn addition looks awesome, as well as the new calf's this year. Excited to see what the pig barn update is going to be. Thanks for sharing and inviting me and my family on your farm and life. Thanks for teaching me and keeping me updated on the farm life, I can't wait to return to the farm.
Good video. Boy scout motto "always be prepared". Surely it will rain again!
Hello from France! Different continent, but same gut feeling: gonna be a dry dry season! Just this morning I got in my hay. Same as you: about 1,5 times as much as I would normally stock up. Great feeling to know that the hay barn is filled.
There are lot of similarities in our situation here in the midwest. We have about 50 4x5 bales from last year, which is net wrapped and outside. This year our expectations are not very high for the yields in the hay. We expect to be close to last years totals on hay, but if we can get a fall cut, which we did last year, that should push us over the top. We did downsize some of our herd, but we may need to do it a little more, if needed. Anyways, I enjoyed your video and thanks for that, I hope you have a nice day!
It is so funny I’m over here in north central Montana dry land farming and this year has been wet. I have family in Washington state and there dry too
I remember when being a child we used hayracks to dry the hay, no bales, just loose hay on the wagon, and a hayfork to shove it down into the barn. When you see the old Norwegian barns, you can see how there was a loft with a ramp to drive, first a horse with wagon, later a tractor to unload the hay. Hundred of man-hours are saved with baling and tractors.
@@cassandrafinny I have retired south in Spain, to get some real summers and light. Here south the weather is wonderful. I just find it fantastic how agriculture has evolved from when I was a child, how children of today is missing out jumping into the hay from the bridge. The highlight of the summer was getting a goat or lamb to bottle-feed. I do not miss some of the hard work, but there was also plenty bright sides to it.
@@cassandrafinny We lived on my grandparent/uncles farm every summer, and a huge part of the fields was to steep to drive a tractor, so they was worked with horse. When tractors became better, they got one of those and worked the land mechanical. The steepest parts are only used for grazing these days. But I am only talking 50 years back when I talk about loose hay driven with horse up into the loft of a barn via a barn bridge. Google hesjer in image search, and they will pop up. You could not dry hay without using these racks. Today a single man can do 50 peoples work using modern technology. Everybody worked to keep the farm going, and jumping in the hay was payment for collecting it. :o) Today young people go to the gym, we worked and had fun at the same time. Nothing beat giving a child the responsibility to bottle feed a lamb or goat until it is weaned, it is pure joy, much better than Disneyland.
@@cassandrafinny My name is Anna (No surprise) and am from Karmøy originally.
There is something about working on a farm that gives you another level of content. Watching wildlife and farm animals, how it grows and green up after rain. How the birds sing and watching a hen you belivede the fox had taken coming with a flock of small chickens she have hatched. Spring first lamb, making ice cream from the goats you have milked (nothing comes close to goat milk for ice) Wild strawberries picked on a straw. Nice somebody agree that Disney does not beat any of it :o)
You’re super dry and here in northern Maine it’s rained nonstop for nearly two weeks. I’d be happy to send some your way lol.
In the 70's, we didn't have a trailer so we just put the bales in the back of our pickups. That was work! Lol
that is an excellent price on the hay. We did get almost an inch of rain a week ago here in Otsego County. The last few days it has been very smoky- today was more normal.
Watching you and Hilary is such a good feeling , working together in a pleasant way and making my day 😊specially with your jokes and Hilary supporting smiles 😊, love it my wish to be a farmer was not fulfilled but watching you makes my day 👍,wish you all the best .
I like how many of the cattle get five feet on the new pasture and then stop to eat!
My Grandfather thought that letting me stack square bales all day would make a man out of me. It made me appreciate what farmers do
My guess is that the square bale was invented to allow efficient moving of hay by an unassisted man, just as you did.
Similarly, I'd guess that the round bale was designed so that hay could be moved efficiently by machine, just as Pete demonstrated in the video.
What we don't appreciate is how this task was done before mechanization. Imagine being a farmer with a scythe and doing the heavy physical labor of swinging that scythe all day to cut a acre of grass.
Then come out to turn the grass with a hay fork until it's dry enough to store.
At that point, if you are lucky enough to have a horse and wagon, you can fork that grass loose into the wagon, take the grass to the barn and then move the hay into the protection of the barn. There are You Tube video showing a mechanical process that allowed hat to be taken from a wagon, and then raised efficiently with a horse to be stored in a barn.
But before that invention in the 19th century, I imagine that was a lot of human labor too.
This is all why such a huge part of labor took place on the farm until the last hundred years.
@@SeattlePioneer your absolutely correct. My grandfather had a Mule, Dan was his name. He eventually got a ‘Cub?’ Tractor. He only had 75-80 acres in western Virginia
@@frankcherry3810 so what happened to Dan after your grandfather got a tractor?
@@SeattlePioneer he spent out his days on the farm
Big round bales save a lot of work compared to small squares, although both have pros and cons. My dad's uncle, Gary Vermeer, introduced the first big round baler to the market in 1971 after a local farmer said he was getting out of the cattle business due to the work involved in putting up and feeding hay. The number of hours saved over the years has to be incredible.
Just like the ol Boy Scout Motto; Always Faithful Always Prepared!
Hope you Hilary and the kids and the live stock are doing well with all the smoke.
old hay is old gold
Thats a good hay wagon, It don't matter what size you have you can fit any size bale on it. Some are designed just for certain size bales that one's pretty good😊. The hay around here Is yielding about half of what it usually does😢
"So that your barns will overflow with plenty..." Proverbs 3:10
Yep Pete.
Y’all can’t ever have too much hay Glad you got it got.
I always learn something new as I watch your farm. Thank you.
I love how cows keep talking while u work 😂😂 makes me smile always
Oh my, the memory of hay baling and storing... In the 1950s, my farm families didn't have a lot so while they bought some hay, they baled a lot too! My father hated hay season because he didn't understand why I (the girl!) was so involved. I have always felt sorry for him, he was a very smart man but he just didn't understand farming. Thanks for sharing. And thanks for the memories!
Hi Dale 👋
Good decision to buy hay now @ a good price, and as a bonus….a good nights sleep….priceless😊
Yes, indeed. You ARE Pete. We like our farm fix from Pete! Patty and company are a load of lucky cattle! "Dad" shows his love with all of that feed stored up for them. This would be a good time for a soaker to hit, and head far north. Thanks Pete, always a pleasure.
Proper planning prevents poor performance.
Good morning Pete, my name is Josh, I'm new to your channel, but I want you to know my wife and I love your videos. Two years ago we bought a small 21acre piece of ground and currently we raise two types of goats on the property... We started thinking we could make our own hey for the goats and started buying old equipment, and I stumbled on to one of your videos about adjusting a sicle mower, been hooked ever since. You have given us more advice on how to get the hey process going than I would of ever figured out on my own, thanks a million. Keep them videos coming 😂 ( obviously goats aren't as picky as Patty but they do complain alot as well) 😂😊
Thanks Josh! Best of luck!
We are feeling the dry conditions in IN, too. Our corn and soybeans are looking kinda sad right now.
That new trailer is sure nice and came in very handy.😊
Good planning, Pete, and if the weather cooperates and you do get the rain to make the hay grow then you can either put it up for your future supply or sell your excess. BTW, I am 65 now but when I was a 16-17 year old in the mid-70s our neighbor "Max" hired me and about a half dozen other boys and we put up 4000 small square bales in one 10 hour hot summer day in South Central Iowa. Two boys on the rack behind the baler, and two boys on the rack at the barn unloading the racks onto the elevator, and two boys in the hay mow stacking it. Max wouldn't let us eat until the end of the day and then he brought a big load of food from his grocery store and we had cold cuts sandwiches, potato chips, and ice cold soda all for free. Back then a lot of our local farmers made small round bales with those old Allis Chalmers Roto-Balers and just let the bales drop in the field and so I started a business picking up their bales for them and putting them in the barn. I had a small crew of 4 fellow high school students working for me. I paid them by the bale put in the barn which was the same way I got paid. I think I got 15 cents a bale and I paid the guys 2.5 cents a bale and kept 5 cents a bale for myself. It was quite an experience.
Pete you need more trees on your field. They are a pain in the a** if you need to cut hay but if you're gonna use them for grazing the trees help a lot with shade and moiste and better grass growth
Always better to be prepared. I fully agree. Hay will store
I love your videos. You seem like one of the very few humble people left in this world. I grew up farming and would love to have what you have someday.
One good thing about being dry is to get hay in before it gets rained on. And for your construction projects. Nuthing worse than slopping around in the mud when building things.
This was nice.relaxing to just ' smell' that hay
I think it’s wise to be prepared. Takes the stress and worry part away.
How things all too often go for me is, if I plan for it then it doesn't happen but if I don't it's almost a sure thing I'll get bit right on the hinder, both cheeks! Maybe I tend to remember the bad things over the good, hard to say sometimes. I'm not a farmer but the drought monitor map shortcut is on my PC anyway, it looks like the worst drought has moved out of Cali and into the more central states but there are vast areas of lesser levels with S & L(short,long term) impacts. I don't know how accurate it is but something is better than nothing.
Making Hay while the Sun shines.
Meanwhile, in northern NH, we've had rain every day for two weeks. Seeds are rotting in the ground. Somewhere, between here and there, days are filled with sunshine and unicorns.
So sorry to hear about the hot, dry season. Here in Maryland (a few hours south of you), we’re barely breaking 70 degrees every day and had a good deal of rain over Memorial Day weekend. It’s the nicest spring in many years. Odd that our weather is so different when we’re so close.
Good preparation leads to peace of mind and sound sleep! And in this situation, happy cows with full bellies! You set a good example for us all, Pete!
Nice to have the hay in the barn and not worry about a shortage.
love the cutoffs Pete. Bring them back in style! 😀
Hi Pete, something i learned at school in the sixties...cause we had to: 30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cool and 0 is ice. Fahrenheit or something.
That bale wagon your Dad built is a beauty.
Hay in the barn is peace of mind. 👍👍👍
I unfortunately think you're right Pete. Glad to see you are prepared for it instead of reacting to it.
You're pretty lucky to have a neighbor willing to sell you hay at a pretty reasonable rate...
Was like that dry, in Europe last year, farmers had to sell cattle at dump prices. Now is the reverse, the grass is overgrown and it keeps raining almost daily, and quality hay is all arround and dirt cheap. Makes total sense to set aside a hay reserve.
that is a lot of hey Pete I think I worked it out ones that a standard 5 by 4 round bale is roughly 18 bales of square hay
Pete, you are the smartest farmer in the area right now! The old saying comes to mind, "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." If you can add another 50 of your own bales, great! If not, you have saved your self weeks and weeks of stress and a lot of money. The other farm channels I watch are also worried about how dry it is but none of them are taking preventative steps like you are. I am throughly impressed.👍👍👍
Very nice wagon you have to haul those round bales
Today, Thursday June 8 in Brant County Ontario , we have had only 39.1 mm = 1.54 inches of rain since May 1. Tonight after coming back from going out to dinner the clouds came over and it started spitting. It's cooled off considerably and we are hoping for rain overnight and tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
Pete,
Your weather is exactly the same as ours in West Michigan. Summer and Winter. Need rain now! We see you in the felds and lying in the pasture in your videos. Any ticks? We have major ticks. Keep up the great videos. Can't wait to see you fix the 786.
Top 20 comments!! Love the shorts…..keep them coming sir!! Small bales!! City boy first week working on the farm stocking small bales…..boy did I learn what real work was that day…..and when I thought we were done….we where only half done because we had to go unload it to!!
50 years ago I helped with a friend's haying. Box bales. Hardest work I ever did.
40 bucks a bale is like hitting the jackpot. Great to have good neighbors who will deal with you and not put the screws to ya.
Last year diesel was $6.30 a gallon and about put me in the poor house.
Performing a rain dance for you and your cattle!
You have been farming long enough to know what you need. The smart farmer is always prepared and you sir are prepared. 😊
Good morning Pete and Mrs. Pete and kids and all the animals