Hay Bales by Hand

Last week we managed to harvest the hay from the top meadow. This was strenuous labour which has left us with a barn half full of hay, in one glorious, unshapely and unmanageable lump. We needed to convert this into bales but wanted to avoid the expense of buying a baler. This was our solution to the problem of making serviceable bales by hand.

First collect your equipment. You will need a sharp knife, some baler twine, and a large plastic bin (but no sticky back plastic at all). The bin needs to be a lot taller than it is wide (by about twice) and should be sturdy. We used a water butt from Wilkinson's for the purpose. On one side we made two small "V" shaped notches to hold the twine's loops and across on the other side two "I" shaped slits to hold the twine.

Run two lengths of baler twine down into the bucket keeping them parallel. Put the looped end over the V notch and jam the other end in the I slit.  Make sure the twine goes to the bottom of the bucket. Also make sure that the two  lines run parallel. They should run about 1/4 in from the edge of the bin on either side.

Now fill the bin with hay. Fill it fully to the top, pressing it down hard by hand as you go. Keep an eye on the twine, watching that it does not get pushed out of place.

Once you have filled to the top and pressed down as hard as you can get in the bin and start using your body weight to compress the hay down further. Try and get the bale to no more than a third of the height of the bin. Pack it as dense as Rhudda's beard

Now slip the free end of the twine through the looped end. Wiggle and pull the twine to take up any slack. Then pull the twine tight and tie it with a good knot. The difficult bit is now over.

Remove your bale and use the remaining lengths off twine (the bits hanging free after the knot) to put a loop of twine around the other side of the bale.

You now have a serviceable bale. It will stack fairly well, it takes up less room and is fairly robust. It is nothing like a real bale in terms of its density or regularity, however,  if you really need that you are going to have  to spend some money.

If you want to see a video of this process then take a look here. The whole process takes about 3 to 5 minutes per bale.

Low Technology Hay Making

We have had the unusual circumstance in North Wales of a run of dry sunny days. Three dry sunny days in a row to be precise. While previously this might haver been a cue for considering having a barbecue, or visiting the beach, or even taking off a jumper this year it meant only one thing; making hay. It has been so wet until now that we feared we would never manage to make hay and I was fearful of what our neighbours would say when they saw our sheep all  bags of bones over the winter with nothing to eat.

The first step was to find our field of grass. The upper 2 acre filed had been earmarked for this. It had not been topped this year and has not been grazed for a few years and it looked like a good meadow to start with.  It shares with our other fields the disadvantage of being very hilly and as the manual labour went on this became increasingly important. Cutting uphill is serious business and develops aches in  muscles that you never know you had.

We used the Goldoni two wheeled tractor with a 53inch finger cutter for the cutting. (It is called a finger blade after the tendency to remove the users fingers and toes). We have no pictures of this in operation as we were to keen to get cracking and get the field cut to take any pictures. The weather sites gave us a maximum of 3 days and we could not loiter.

During the cutting I became very aware of how many creatures call the meadow home. There were voles, frogs, crickets, dragonflies and even small snakes fleeing from my path as I advanced through the grass. The cutting though hard work took about 4 hours and the machine cut well leaving good clear swathes of grass behind it. My assistants followed and arranged the hay for drying.

At the end of the first day the hays was gathered up into windrushes to try and reduce the effect of dew in the morning. The next two days were taken up with turning and tedding the hay. The hay was turned twice each day. Each time taking a minimum of two hours.

During this we learnt the advantage of using the right tools. A pitchfork is much better than any other implement and well worth the money. We now have two, one each, and they might also come in handy if ever there are strange ungodly goings on at the local castle (Though I am not sure we have any flaming torches to go with them).

By the end of the third day we were exhausted and the final turn of the hay was  followed by a gathering of it together into mounds for transfer to the barn. This was the hardest of all the jobs.Each load weighed about 40 kilograms, was dragged on a tarpauline to the end of the field (Up and downhill) then carried to the barn. It was slow going and we didn't finish until after 10p.m. and the latter runs were done by torchlight.

However, it is now done. The barn is full.  It rained through the night and most of today and it did not matter. Our sheep have their winter dinners stored safely away and we have another skill tucked under our belt.