Return of the Wonderer (sic)
Having been absent without leave for a few months, and while I ponder on my next meaningful contribution to the Journal, I’m sharing my thoughts from September on the problems of making hay while the sun shines (or doesn’t) when one is but a very small fish in a big commercial agricultural pond.
This year, we didn’t actually get any hay at all made by the conventional methods, so I actually experimented with making a miniscule amount ‘by hand’ - with a scythe.
I do look rather like a post menopausal grim reaper (Surely the Grim Reaper is by definition, menopausal? - Ed)
I am working on a memoir and these paragraphs, which explain how I ended up grim reaping, are part of the section I’m currently developing. The discipline of a daily thousand words has come and gone, but when I apply myself, I find it helpful.
Using the structure of the months of the year to build my story, also focuses the mind. What is September? What is it usually? What has it been this year? What would I like it to be?
Making Hay When the Sun Shines. Or Not.
Making hay when you don’t have all the kit yourself is a nightmare. A few contractors in the area offer hay making, but they have incredibly big kit, and the first obstacle, quite literally, is whether they can get said kit through our old fashioned, wooden, 12 ft gates. This cuts your options down for a start.
Kit issue number two is that no one has small baling equipment any more. We’ve searched high and low for a vintage enthusiast with the equipment to make them, and as the years have passed, and the old rigs have packed up and not been replaced, eventually, we have drawn a blank, and had to have big bales made. Big bales need to be put into our barn with a telehandler, another expense, and once they’re in there, we can’t do a thing with them, except open them, waste a lot because we don’t have the kit to handle them, and feed the rest inconveniently by the barrow load.
Then there’s the cost. Or rather there isn’t. Hay is made to an esoteric formula know only to the contractor, who will charge by the hour to mow it, then by the hour to ted and turn it, row it up and make it ready to bale ( but no one knows how many turns it will require, how many days it will take, and how many hours each turn ted or row will take. So even supposing they will tell you what the hourly rate is, you are not much the wiser.) Then they will charge by the bale for baling. Now, years of experience on our piece of land gives us a rough idea, but it has varied a good deal according to the weather, how it’s been grazed, and, we suspect, the runoff of fertiliser from the field above. So there you have it, multiply three unknowns by your first number, then another unknown by your second number, add the two together and budget accordingly.
Lastly, there’s the issue of being small fry, incomers (we’ve only been here twenty years), unimportant and A Bit of a Faff (see above re: gates). So in a year when the sun shines consistently from May to September, there is a hosepipe ban and standpipes in the streets of London suburbs, and the Daily Express starts talking about Drought Armageddon, we might get a smooth run at making our hay. Otherwise, we get left and left, fitted in when it’s ‘just a bit cloudy’, left till September, and a couple of times, abandoned altogether with the hay cut, the heavens open, and all hope of baling gone.
Given that our little patch usually yields around 250 - 300 small bales (or did, when you could get them) or the equivalent thereto, and it used to cost us around about £1.50 - £2 a bale this is no small investment for part time peasants like us. Last year, the 19 big bales we had made by a new contractor cost us £750. That’s just not sustainable.
You’d think given all the smallholders and horse people around, it would be a blinding business plan, but of course, hay can only be made when the sun shines, and everyone wants the kit or the contractor at the same time. This is why we mere peasants fall through the net.
As a result, this year, we just didn’t get hay made, and the fall out from that will land later. The sheep will be on deferred grazing (that is, they’ll be eating what would have been hay direct from the field) which is an accepted regenerative practice, but not one we’ve tried before.
Other September Things
This is very much first draft, and I share it only to point out that I am not merely whiling away my time reading library books and knitting socks, though I am very much doing both of those things as well!
My read for the month was Helen Rebanks ‘The Farmer’s Wife’. I’m close to finishing it, and have enjoyed it very much - although it’s raised some interesting issues for me, which I hope to dive into fully at a later date. I confess, it was not a library book, I pre-ordered a signed copy!
The socks are going extremely slowly. I’m sure the encroaching dark evenings will help them along.
I’ve rehabilitated my sourdough starter, and got into quite a decent routine with that (though today I forgot to add the salt. Rookie error.)
I had a piece published in the Landworkers Alliance anniversary publication ‘With the Land’.
I went to the optician for the first time in seven years (!) and now have new glasses.
Neil cleared the old greenhouse, as I’m preparing to write a piece on building a hot bed for a magazine, and need to actually do it.
With those nuggets I shall leave you!
How was your September? How is your writing progressing, if writing is your thing?
What have I missed?
Jackie, this is such a delightful update - thank you for a lovely read! I'm so behind on my reading but was thrilled to find this after a session of reacquainting myself with my Substack inbox this afternoon.
Gorgeous scything pic! And I absolutely loved the dive into your memoir - thank you so much for sharing your haymaking story.
Can I share something? Two years ago while my husband was taking photographs to illustrate a book called 'Meadow' we found ourselves at Highgrove, where HRH was having his meadow cut by a team of scythers. Visitors to the garden aren't allowed to take photographs, but Jim had special dispensation. In a quiet moment I asked the team leader if he could show me how to hold a scythe, and to cut a tiny patch of the meadow myself. 'Sure!' he said, and after a few minutes of practice off I went.
On the drive home I said to Jim: 'I can't wait to see that picture!'
'Which one?'
'The one of me scything HRH's meadow, of course!'
'Oh, I didn't take a picture of you', he said. He paused. And then: 'Did you want me to?'
Let's just say that it was rather a quiet journey after that... 🤣
Lovely to hear from you again....you have my deepest empathies, re: the hay situation. At my last job we were at the mercy of a contractor, who had taken over from a neighbouring farmer who had retired (I know!). Needless to say, the new contractor was exactly that - a contractor, and not a person who understood the land much at all. It was a constant frustrating battle. Not to mention, he refused to use square bales and we got stuck having to deal with the giant round ones that the barn geography wasn't equipped to handle...soooo much waste, of time and hay. Ugh.
I'm very intrigued about the book you mentioned and would love to hear your thoughts. xo