50 Years in the Making

Recognize this handsome high schooler? 

Maybe this guy looks a little more familiar. 

They are one in the same. And he celebrated a milestone last week. For 50 years, he's been harvesting crops on this ground along the Stafford/Reno County line. 

When Randy was a junior in high school, his Great Uncle Glenn Bagley gave him the opportunity to put up hay on his ground. Randy got a share of the hay. It was the start of Randy's own farming journey, independent of his dad. 

Undated photo, but probably the mid-'90s. Randy with Uncle Glenn during wheat harvest as we harvested his crop.

Randy has never stopped being grateful for the confidence his Uncle Glenn showed him at such a young age. Later, Glenn and Gladys' daughter, Mary Hughes, inherited the land and was an inquisitive and involved landlord. 

From Glenn & Gladys' 60th wedding anniversary. I'm thankful for the great scrapbooks Marie (Randy's mom) kept.

 

Unfortunately, Mary died suddenly last year from Covid-19. We miss her and wish we could share this milestone anniversary with her, but we know she's cheering us on from heaven. 

Last year, as Randy was baling on that ground, he called me and said, "Next summer, I'd like for you to write a blog when I harvest this field of alfalfa. It will be 50 years since I began working on this hay field."

Back in the day, he used the alfalfa field as an FFA project, so we had some photos and descriptions of the experience (along with some really snazzy photos of Randy modeling clothes from the 1970s, including his letter jacket paired with plaid pants.)

Click on these images to enlarge them and read the text written by Randy for the FFA report.

As a senior, Randy won a crop production award in the South Central area of FFA. He still has the plaque on our office wall.

 On June 4, we began swathing the field. 

The operator has changed a smidge ... but so has the equipment to accomplish the job. 

 

 

We got a rain on it on June 7, so the baling was delayed until June 10.

 

Now, instead of doing small bales like Randy did early in his career, we harvest it into large round bales, which we then use for feeding cattle during the wintertime.

 

We no longer use that shed Randy used for square bale storage and that property has since been sold. But we got permission from the owner to take a few photos there for old times' sake.

We celebrated 40 years of married life together in March. And, now in June, Randy gets to celebrate another big milestone - 50 years of farming. It's a great privilege. We are blessed and thankful.

Fresh Cut Hay Candles: Yes, It Is a Thing

Yankee Candle company has scents like "midsummer's night" or "sun and sand," but I didn't find a "hay field" scent.

However, Grey Horse Candle Co. has entered the market on this summertime fragrance. Here's what they had to say about their Fresh Cut Hay candle:

It's an obsession that only other horse people understand, the fresh aroma of this season's first cutting, baled into a big bundle of happiness. Experience the sensation of a warm breeze blowing through freshly cut hay fields. (Your horse will love it, too!)

Our Fresh Cut Hay fragrance is infused with natural orange essential oil, and captures the essence of summer florals and the fresh aroma of freshly cut grass. And with a hint of orange and sandalwood, it’s a natural scent you’ll love any time of the year!

I wonder if it's a big seller.  (They also have Wash Rack, Give a Horse a Carrot and Sweet Feed, to name a few. Hmmm ... interesting.)

We haven't needed a candle to capture the scent of freshly-cut alfalfa here on the County Line lately.

The purple blossoms add decorative flair to the subtle aroma. The butterflies like them, too, though on a summer evening, their traffic pattern seemed to have more take-offs and landings than a busy airport. It wasn't ideal for capturing their portraits. Ah well!

The guys have been working on our second cutting of alfalfa.

This has not been a good alfalfa hay year. Our first cutting yielded only 200 bales - half of our normal 400-bale yield.

 

Our lack of springtime and summer moisture has stunted the crop's growth. Our second cutting will be even smaller, though a few rain showers have generated enough growth to make a second cutting possible - even if it's thin.

The guys are still in the process of raking and baling the second cutting.

We use the alfalfa to feed our cattle. Usually, we raise more than we can use and sell the rest.

We'll have to see how the rest of the summer goes to see if we'll have any excess hay to sell.

Randy hopes to supplement alfalfa with sudan, pearl millet and silage for feeding our cattle. While last week's rains helped boost those crops, this week's 90+ temperatures are not helping those crops flourish either.

As with most things in farming, we'll have to take a wait-and-see position. The waiting is made a little nicer with scenes like this though. I just wish those clouds had some rain in them.

A "Gem" of a Crop

We have been growing pearls on 21 acres this summer.
Oh wait! We've been growing pearl millet. I guess I won't call the jeweler after all.

But we will be calling the cows to dine on this supplemental feed this coming winter. Pearl millet is a fast-growing feed. It does well on sandier soils.

Last week, Randy swathed the pearl millet and left it to dry down. Because it makes thicker windrows, it takes longer for it to be ready to bale.

Even though I thought the cat-tail looking heads were pretty, Randy says there isn't a lot of nutrient value there. It will mostly be used for roughage for our mama cows.

Pearl millet is low in prussic acid, which can cause poisoning in feed.

One other advantage of the pearl millet is that it will grow back. So we'll be able to feed the baled millet. And we'll also be able to put up electric fence around the field and use it to graze cattle this fall.

 We also left some standing. It, too, will be grazed this fall.

So, it really is a "gem" of a crop.

***

Note: I may be fired as reporter for this particular crop endeavor. Randy baled it on Friday, but I didn't think about going to take a photo. Then Cierra picked it up that afternoon. I missed that photo op, too.

It's now at the end of the field, ready to be fed to the cattle this winter.

So all's well that "ends" well. (Farm pun alert!)

A Little (Golden) Light on the Subject: Alfalfa

 

A note:  I took most of the photos below at the golden hour in the evening and at sunrise of another day. Much of the work for the alfalfa crop is done in the evenings and the mornings. It helps keep the leaves on the alfalfa, which increases nutrients for the cattle who will eventually eat it. It also makes for some pretty photos! Right now, my blog header (also posted above) is a photo I took in the evening last July. It's one of my all-time favorite alfalfa photos.

 

There's no question: Wheat Harvest gets top billing around here. But it's not our only harvest. Last week, we were in the midst of another kind of harvest on the County Line - harvesting alfalfa hay.

This was the second cutting of alfalfa this summer.  We don't swath the entire alfalfa crop at once. Instead, the guys swath just part of it at a time. That spreads out the risk somewhat. For example, we put down 85 acres just as wheat harvest ended. Then, 2 inches of rain fell on it before it could be baled. But the 130 acres of alfalfa swathed last week got baled without any rain, which preserves the quality. (We did have a breakdown with the baler tractor, which delayed the last of the baling for a day. But we only got sprinkles on the remaining hay. Randy got it baled Sunday morning - and still made it to church for Sunday School and to do the children's sermon!)

Last Friday, before the sun came up,  Ricky raked two of the windrows together.This speeds the baling process.

 

Here's a better photo series of the raking process (from the County Line archives).

Randy followed behind in the baler, making big round bales of alfalfa hay.

Sunspots and the rounded bales mimicked the fireball of the sun as it slipped above the horizon.

 By the time the sun was fully up, the guys had moved to another field.

 

As each field was completed, Cierra moved the bales to the end of the field. That gets it off the field so that the alfalfa can grow back.

This year, we will likely get only three cuttings, rather than the four we sometimes get. Since wheat harvest stretched out so long, we didn't get the alfalfa cut as quickly. However, we likely wouldn't have been able to cut it anyway because of the rain, which slowed down wheat harvest in the first place. Still, the rain has provided good, lush alfalfa. We got more than 400 bales from this second cutting of alfalfa. Right now, we are only 100 bales short of our 2015 total crop, which we should surpass with the third cutting.

HOWEVER ...
"Don't count your bales before they're stacked."
That would be the equivalent of "don't count your chickens before they're hatched," I suppose.

Photo from from the County Line archives. It was taken from the combine for a bird's-eye view!

We will feed the bales to our cattle during the winter. If we have extra bales, we will sell them to feedlots or another buyer.

For a blog post with even more details and photos about hay harvest on the County Line, go to Making Hay When the Sun Shines.

Randy also baled some crabgrass. It was kind of like "leftovers" from wheat harvest. Because it was so wet during and after harvest, we weren't able to work ground promptly. All the rain caused the crabgrass to grow. He decided to  swath and bale the crabgrass and he'll also feed it to cows this winter.