The other day Andreea decided to clean out the barn where we currently house our flock. She had setup it up with areas covered with hay which the flock really liked. Over time the hay accumulates moisture, droppings and food scraps and had become … less attractive. So she pulled it all out and dumped it outside (which turned into a magical playground for the flock who explored the hay as if it was heaven). Then she went to bring new hay from one of our piles … and then called for help.
The hay piles had accumulated a substantial snow cover. One of the piles, the one we made and also the one closest to the barn, was not arranged very well so that moisture (and now frost) had found its way deeper into it then the other piles. So it was much harder work then we thought it would be. We managed to get the barn re-done and I began to appreciate the skill that goes into properly arranging a pile of hay in such a way that it will hold, be protected from the weather, and comfortable to take apart. I still don’t know how to do this … and this post will not provide a thorough answer. However …
I then sat at the computer and decided to search for some information on this. The search results were astonishing:
- First there was a generic and superficial article about hay at Wikipedia.
- Then there was an article about how to stack bales of hay (which needs to be done properly so that the stacks do not collapse).
- Then there was information (articles and videos mind you) about how to stack hay in Farmville (an online game).
Only after digging deeper into the search results did I find a photo-blog of someone who documented travels in Romania giving some information about how peasants make a haystack and how they take it apart. There is much more to it the these pages show … or should I say endless more details that are hard to describe unless you actually do it
The world has changed, and though I believe overall it has done so for the better, there a few weeds I would definitely pull out of the ground. Precious (as in the kind that feeds cows for meat and milk) knowledge is being lost and replaced superficiality and ignorance.
Our personal experience, so far, is driving a horse and carriage, loading it up in the field and unloading into a somewhat messy haystack.
I don’t know if our hay-skills will improve much as we hope to decrease our need for harvested hay, reduce the amount of land where it grows and probably hire machinery to cut it down and bale it for us in the interim.