It is summer after all....

After the last 2 weeks of dreary, cold weather I was beginning to wonder about our summer.  But slowly the signs are beginning to appear.  The first, STRAWBERRIES!  We went to Windy Hill Strawberry Farm between Titusville and Spartansburg and picked up 20 quarts of strawberries to freeze.  While strawberries are on our list of additions to our farm, we do not have any yet.  Windy Hill is an Amish farm that does a great job with their berry plants.  They have tons of great looking berries for $3.50/quart!  I would suggest that anyone wanting berries pay them a visit.  If you need directions, let us know.  They said they would have berries for at least another 2-3 weeks.
The second, clear and warm weather showed up.  On the way back from the mill picking up feed on Monday I saw it.  Even though it was cloudy and going to rain Monday evening, half of the fields on the trip were cut for hay.  I did not cut on Monday as our mower was out of service, but Tuesday we did.  We baled our first 600 bales yesterday and have another 800 on the ground to get today.  We will then take a break until later next week when the threat of rain is gone.
I think that hay is the one thing that mother nature is in full control of.  We depend on her for so much, but technology has come so far to help out when we need it.  We have greenhouses to extend growing seasons, tractors to make the work easier, and driers to make the grains keep.  But not with hay.  There is nothing to dry hay, except mother nature.  We need warm/hot sunny days to get it dry.  What if it is not dry enough?  Well, there are a couple consequences.....the hay could go dusty and mold in the barn or it could spontaneously combust and burn your barn down.  So, without these dry hot days, you are out of luck when making hay.  We load all of our hay on wagons (I stack the bales as we go) and then leave the wagons overnight to unload the next morning.  We have 4 wagons right now, and will be adding a new one to the fleet this weekend.  This allows us to get lots of hay harvested with just 2 people.  Then we unload later.  Some people have kicker balers that shoot the bales into the wagons which allows one person to bale, but you get about 50% less hay on a wagon.  So you need to be unloading as you go.  I also like to see the stacked wagons lined up in a row after we are done.