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| If we try to make bright green hay, we make mold and firey bales in the middle of Iowa. Its not dry here until its turned brown, and if we want to take 4 days to dry it, most Junes we will need a week because of the rains. So spreading it wide to dry it in a day less pays. On the other hand, the narrow windrows from my PT-10 used to be so carefully oriented that they'd shed water like a round bale. And when I baled in the same direction I'd mowed, the baler would pick up that ribbon like picking up a carpet or stair runner. Even when it had laid there long enough for the alfalfa to start to grow through it.
Saving that day of drying often made the difference between hay in bales in the barn or hay in windrows rotting in the field.
Sure, raking could have been tough on the hay. Rolling along with the old IH #15 four bar beater at 4 or 5 mph, left only stems, cleaned of leaves and rolled up neatly into a rope. And the wheel rake didn't do that but dusted in some topsoil to make the hay look dusty and equally hard to sell. But when I set the baling time (usually mid to late afternoon when the hay would loose its toughness/moisture) no bales heated. When the customer watching the thunderheads to the west pushed, it always heated.
I don't make hay anymore. Cost too much to not raise cash grain crops while getting the "free" nitrogen from the alfalfa, cost more when the checks bounced. Need to sell off the remains of the PT-10 and the last hay rake and clean up the place a little.
Gerald J. | |
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Benefits of laying down a wide swath of alfalfa
