for hay. Connecticut is not an agricultural powerhouse, though like every single state it does have an agricultural sector; it is best known for nursery plants, Christmas trees, and intensive, specialty farms. It is not known for sprawling fields. And honestly, why should it be? Though the Connecticut valley holds some of the finest soils in the world*, the state is small, densely populated, hilly, and rocky. You cannot have a thousand acre field here.
Nonetheless, I grew up bucking hay at least once a year and usually more. At one point we went through 700 bales (55lb square) a year. * This year, I asked for 60. Our field currently produces 1400 bales a year, generally high quality, off of about ten acres. The man who does it, does not make money off of it. He likes doing it, he can use the hay for his cattle, and he has the equipment. In this case, all vintage tractors (several gorgeous Elliots and Farmalls) that need several days steady running a year; they have another life as show tractors.
Hay is an increasingly scarce product here. Hayfields invariably make high quality subdivisions, while hay (though the price has gotten painfully high) is not a high value crop. It is however, labour and equipment intensive in the most spiky and unpredictable fashion. You need at least: one tractor (preferably two), a cutter/conditioner, a tedder, a rake, and a baler. Hay wagons are also recommended. And A Lot of gasoline. Then you need the people to drive the equipment and buck the hay, and you need them at some undefined point in June and again in late August, and you need them to work in the full sun and fast. Why fast? Once hay is down, if it is rained on in the field it goes from 6 dollars a bale to 1.50. Hay weather is also thunderstorm weather.
I will, no matter where I live, for the rest of my life start to get edgy the first weekend in June. Will the hay be good? Are there enough people? Will it rain? Still, I love the thundering roar of the tractors, the smell of hay, of gasoline, the ka-chunk sound of the balers; I loved the challenge of stacking hay as fast as it came off the elevator, the trick of grabbing the hay as it came off the spiked chain without snapping the twine or slipping near a lethal piece of equipment, the trick of stacking six high alone, eight or more with a helper. Who is faster, the stacker or the loader?
Do I mind not having the stress? No. Do I miss it? yeah.
Two years ago, the Elliot in the foreground with the baler, the tedder is the piece unhitched to the right, a Farmall in the distance.
*Connecticut once produced shade-grown tobacco of a quality rivalling the famed Cuban strand.
*I also stacked innumerable hay and straw bales at the farm where I worked.
*Wordpress’ spellcheck hates ‘Farmall’…that says something, doesn’t it?
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