Make hay while the sun shines...

I mentioned previously that we were going to move away from raising steers for beef and more towards some alpacas and hay baling. Well this morning the hay man arrived to cut the paddocks we'd earmarked for hay. Thankfully the weather is lovely and I really hope it stays this way for three or four more days.
Now that the grass is all cut he will be back again tomorrow and perhaps the following day to turn it all so it dries out more quickly. Then it will get baled. We've gone for square bales as they're easy to handle and they're popular amongst small farmers. We will keep a small amount for ourselves and store the rest until they're sold.  We're lucky because we have a large barn that was built for this very purpose.

I have to say, it was all rather exciting!

We've been for a wee wander to inspect it all.

 This is the walk through one of the paddocks to get to the other ones. It's very lush. We've kept it, though, as the lady alpacas are arriving on Tuesday afternoon and this will be their home.

One Man and his Dogs

To prove it's been cut!! ( If you look closely at the very top of this photo, in the middle, you'll see some mad creature running around) 

  

Looking down the length of part of one of the paddocks. This is about half of one paddock, there's another one like this and also the front paddock too. We've made a total guess, and Lloyd reckons there will be around 300 bales - we'll see how close he gets.

The dogs thought it was all rather fun.
Years ago, when we came to look at this property one of the things we loved was, when the owner showed us round, his dogs came and ran around like daft things. We thought how lovely that was and how nice it would be to do it with our own ones.

Bob thought it was all rather tasty.

So, keep your fingers crossed for us that it doesn't rain.