50 bales of hay

Today J and I set out to get hay. While we do both have full time jobs outside of our farm, we don't always work typical schedules. J works for a hospital and has to work off shifts and weekends sometimes. He worked all this past weekend, and had Monday off. I chose to flex around my work schedule this week so I could help him get hay. While he often does it on his own, I know it's a big job, and a lot easier with two people. It also gave us a chance to spend the day together, which often gets lost in the busy-ness of life.

The temp inside the boys barn this morning was 10*F. It was a lot colder outside. Not only does snow not stop us on our farm, neither does the cold.



J found a local farm that sells hay. We've been purchasing our hay there for about the last 6 months. The draw back is that they are down to only the hay in the upper loft, meaning we have to climb up there to get it. It looks like a tangled mess up there:



And here the light is coming in the big door to the outside. Right outside there is a story drop to the ground. I'm not generally scared of heights, but I wasn't too fond of getting close to that door with a bale of hay:



From the loft, we throw the bales down into a pile (this picture was taken looking down from the loft:



And a picture from down below:



It was just slippery enough that we couldn't get the trailer any closer to the barn, so we had to haul each bale that far. Then we come home to unload and stack the hay in our hay barn.

While this is a big chore, it always feels good to have it done and have plenty of hay on hand for our hungry alpacas.