First we cleaned out the hay barn (it's more like a hay shelter or hay tent):
It's amazing how stuff can accumlate in there, that you didn't intend. This meant we had to find places for this "stuff". It lead to our getting junk out of the garage and basement (some stuff was donated, some stuff went to the dump). Then we could rearrange the stuff we needed (wanted) to keep. While it made for a lot of work on Saturday, it resulted in my having a hay tent full of hay and a clean garage and organized basement! I love clean and organized.
That picture is taken from the back of the hay shelter, where we stack the hay. For my day to day feeding of the alpacas, I enter through this end:
The fence and gate is to keep our house dogs out of the hay shelter. This is right in our backyard, where our house dogs go outside.
We ordered our alpaca hay from a supplier a few hours away from us. Since we can only haul about 50 bales of hay in our truck and trailer combination, we asked that they deliever the hay (there was an extra charge per mile for this, but we still felt it was worth it to have all 200 bales arrive at once).
Around mid-morning the hay truck with flatbed arrived:
They pulled the flatbed as close to our hay shelter as possible:
We all dumped the hay bales off their flat bed. The cost doesn't include their stacking the hay at our farm, that is all up to us.
After this point I didn't get many more pictures (I was quite busy the rest of the day). We moved and stacked these bales of hay into our hay shelter.
Emma and I did most of the moved of the hay bales, while J stacked them (I have a heck of a time stacking hay bales). It wasn't too far into our day when Emma and I noticed how the rope ties on the hay bales pulled on our hands. We joked "we don't really need finger, right?" As the day went on there were times we thought an arm was in the way or a leg and those are expendable body parts too, right?
I did have to take a picture of Emma and the chair she created out of the hay bales:
She was quite upset when we had to move and stack the bales that created "Chairee". I was shocked she would let me take her picture while she was dressed in her farm clothing, but she agreed, Chairee was that important to her.
We filled the hay shelter with 177 bales of hay. We then took the remaining bales up to our boy's barn. I can't believe I forgot to get a picture of the hay shelter stacked full (ok, I can believe it, we were beat and ready to close it up, no time to stop for pictures).
Now we are set with hay (and a clean garage and basement) for a few months.
2 comments:
We can get about 70 bales on our trailer so we end up making a bunch of trips in Sept/Oct. This year we put a shout out to the local high school and got three teenagers to help us for $$$. It was money well spent. We made a few trips in one day and it felt good to be set for the Winter.
Goodness, it will be nice when our kids are strong enough to help ;-)
I totally agree, it will be a blessing when Zack is older and can help stack hay. This year we had him help clean out the hay shelter, then the garage and basement, but he didn't have to haul any hay. At 9 years old he wouldn't have been able to do much anyway (he's not tall enough to pick up the hay bale). I figured I might as well save that chore for when he can be a help. Emma is pretty close to her full height and she's about as strong as me, so I figured it was time for her to help. And she was a huge help. When Zack is 12 he'll be hauling hay bales for sure!!
We had thought of seeing about hiring some high school students to help. But never got around to pulling that off. As it was, this was when we had the $ to get a big load of hay, and we managed to stack it all. It was a good work out, for sure!
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