Cleaning Hay Feeders and Preparing for Rain

First of all, Melissa wants to say thank you to everyone for their boot suggestions, no doubt another purchase is in her near future. Her box from REI came on Friday and I got to see all of Melissa’s winter clothing and glove purchases. Curiously, I saw everything except the bill. I’m thinking that little nugget will remain well hidden for some time.

As Melissa mentioned late fall weather in Tennessee can be somewhat schizophrenic. We’ve got a cold front that’s getting ready to stall out just to our west overnight tonight and that scenario usually brings copious day long rains to our neck of the woods courtesy of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. But today was simply gorgeous; shirt sleeve warm (even for Melissa) with lots of bright sunshine and a nice breeze out of the south. We’ve had several days in a row of nice weather and the ground has dried up quickly.

I thought today would be a good day to clean up the wasted hay in each hay feeder as well as the manure that collects around the feeders. We try to do this every few weeks as the weather permits because if you don’t keep after it the hay feeders slowly get buried in a stomped up mess of old hay, and the feeders get surrounded by a stomped up mess of dropped hay and manure. We stand each round bale hay feeder on it’s edge and roll it a safe distance away and then we scrape up and push away the old hay and manure with the front end loader of the tractor. We do our best to remove everything and get all the way down to the gravel layer. This often requires the use of a pitchfork to supplement the front end loader. Like most jobs on the farm this one can get tedious, but it was such a nice day that I actually briefly felt sorry for all the folks sitting inside wondering what to do with themselves. After a few hours of labour we had this done and we ended our day by refilling the feeders with new hay.

Although we started out grumbling about working on Sunday it turned into a nice day. I hope you had a nice weekend !

Kennedy and Toledo napping with Stormy hanging out