Wow, what a week. (Posted in January, happened in December.)

Everyone else around here cut their hay in October or November, but that was big round silage bales. We're not really able to manage the silage bales other than stacking them out in the paddock. You need a forklift to move them.

Which is why we stick with small bales. My neighbour Ben organizes it, usually in December, so his place and mine get done at the same time (plus other neighbours intermittently join the pool). Not as many operators offer small bales, so we started co-ordinating our paddocks to make it worthwhile a couple of years ago.

But its been raining all through late spring and the start of summer, a little bit, every so often and not really suited to cutting and drying hay. The long range weather forecast said it was going to raining on and off for weeks.

Damian the hay cutter showed up here on Tuesday and suggested these were our options:
- cut it NOW and try hard to dry it before the heavy rain Saturday.
- cut it NOW and wait until after the Saturday rain to redry it.
- cut it after Christmas (but by then it would have been past its peak)
- don't try and bale it

The three days available for drying were nice days, but not hot enough. Damian had already said to another neighbour he was wasting his time cutting it. His was too lush and green and wouldn't dry in time. So it was a gamble if we went ahead.

Ben was going ahead, and I said we would, too. I stewed over it overnight, but in the end rationalized it along the lines...if it doesn't dry, we leave it slashed and it can rot back into the paddock. Nothing lost other than the cutting costs. Oh, and the hay I would have to buy for winter....!

Damian offered to run his machinery through more than once. The extra fluffing would help dry it out. In the end he came back twice and turned it all. Amazing committment to getting a good result.

So each day I'd check it. One good test is to grab a handful and twist it. If it twists and breaks you are close to dry enough. If it twists into a knot you're not there yet. But each morning we had a heavy dew, and everything was very damp. Just the green color of the cut told me it wasn't dry yet, the twist test confirmed it.

But, despite the relatively mild daily temperature it was starting to dry ok, but the weather predicted for Saturday kept getting worse. And to top it off, the anticipated commencement for the downpour on Saturday kept moving forward. By Thursday the predction for Saturday was rain from 11am.

On Friday morning we decided we would try and bale it that evening. The hay balers would show up around 7pm. That would mean the whole day of sitting out in the sun would be maximised. Damian did another toss, and we sat it out.

We aren't their only customers, of course. That Friday, they got stuck on another job, and by 7pm it was clear they would be going all night, somewhere else, not at our place. (They took on a baling job of 16 acres. When they got there it was 16 HECTARES!)

On Saturday, one eye on the weather, one on the front driveway, I anxiously waited for the noise of a big tractor. They showed up at Ben's around 10 and started racing around spitting out bales. It was going to be tight!

The rain held off, and at 11 they started on our place. Normally I'd keep out of their way but this time I walked behind the tractor clumping the bales together in threes and fours to make them faster to pickup. My daughter and some inlaws showed up, which meant we could run two vehicles and trailers collecting.

The bales were still not 100% dry. Damian had made it clear that we might have to stack them in a drying format rather than stack in a tight pile. That is, spaced 10 centimetres apart, nothing on top. I had cleared a huge amount of floorspace in the shed so we could do that, and we raced through the pickup and unloading. In the end we ran out of space and I hastily threw some boards across the top of the drying bales and stacked more bales on top. Not quite what Damian had suggested but under the circumstances a workable solution.

On the very last trailer load the rain came down. We all got a bit wet. I stacked those bales near the door and over the next few weeks opened the shed doors and let them sit in the sun and keep drying out. Over the last few weeks, as the front row dried I moved them into the longer term tight haystack. Its January now and I'm nearly finished restacking them.

All that work we did on improving the paddock has paid off. We got more bales this year. But more importantly, they were a better quality. More rye, less fog grass, denser and heavier. Some of that weight was retained moisture which would slowly evaporate out, but some of it represented the better quality of grass.

The previous year that was affected by drought left us with a very poor hay cut, and I had to sell off most of our cattle as I could see we wouldn't have had enough feed for them to get through winter. Now I have plenty of feed, and I wish they were still here.