It's that time of the year again

Fall prep is underway.  Since moving here and adding farm animals to the mix, the first tell-tale sign of fall is the hay delivery.  For the past couple of years we have purchased our hay, whether it was "old" hay to be used as coop insulation (we stack several layers high around the outside of the coop as a wind break, and trust me, you need it up here when those frigid, north winds come sweeping across the property) or as feed for our three little dumplings, from our neighbor, Bill Dunkelberg. Bill raises beef cattle on 450 pristine acres.  He's also a hay farmer, primarily out of necessity to feed his head of cattle over the winter months.  But he's always had plenty of extra to sell to me.  He grows beautiful hay and his 2nd cut is green, sweet and nutritious, and my sheep love it.

Unfortunately, when I called to place my order a month or so ago, Bill told me he wouldn't be able to supply me this year.  "What do you mean?" I asked with dismay.  He said the summer has been so cool and wet that the grass had only grown to half its usual height.  His 1st cut was dismal and the 2nd wasn't looking much better.  He said he would be lucky to pull off the 3000 bales he needed for his own use.  He couldn't even supply any 1st cut from last year for the coops because he needed every bit of viable hay for the cattle.  Sorry.  I hung up the phone is disbelief and panic immediately set in.  How was I going to feed the sheep for 6 and half months?  What if every hay farmer was in the same predicament? OMG, what was I going to do??

I immediately ran to Nora to share the news, and she suggested I contact a friend of ours because she recalled that Angie had a hay contact through her father.  I did, and long story short, Angie was able to score both bedding hay (for coops and sheep barn), as well as 2nd cut from Farmer (Don) Eldritch. He didn't deliver, but Jim and Nora were able to make a few runs over the course of a couple of days. Jim, being a bit on the conservative side, was only willing to put 16 bales in the back of his pick-up on the first trip; he worked up the nerve for 20 on his 2nd and 3rd trips.  According to Nora, Don was finding his reticence quite amusing and told them about an "elderly" woman (mind you, Don is probably in his 70s) who shows up every year by herself, in her small "foreign" pick-up truck, and stacks 40-45 bales (by herself) into the back and drives off.  As Nora would say, "gotta love North Country folk."

2nd cut

Now we have almost 60 bales of beautiful hay stacked in the barn.  The sheep love it, I'm hugely relieved, and the first step in fall prep has been accomplished.  We also have a portion of the bedding hay in the barn.  Nora and Jim will likely pick up the remainder next week; I was much less concerned about that than the feed hay.

Bedding hay, next to some straw left over from last year

Next up, at least for Jim, is cutting and stacking another 5+ cords of wood.  We probably have enough wood in the wood shed and barn to get us through this winter (assuming we don't have a repeat of last winter). The wood he cuts this fall will have time to dry out for use next year.