We Pride Ourselves on the Quality of Our Hay and Straw

It includes 5 automated fans located at the floor , on three walls. It also includes two larger fans in the roof. These fans produce significant airflow through the barn to assist in the final "cure" of our hay production. The fourth wall has a very large opening for ingress and egress which also allows natural ventilation. In addition there are two large roller doors on the east and west walls to assist in proper ventilation and final curing.

The new barn also has 2 foot overhangs at the roof eaves, with perforated steel panels that allow natural ventilation to come up through them and follow along the underside of the roof-line, to exit the top ventilated ridge cap on the peak of the roof, which allows additional natural ventilation to move water vapor from curing hay to leave the hay storage barn.

On the hay field front, we were fortunate to have planted between the rains... 67 acres of new hay field production acres. It could not have happened at a better time, just in time to help make up for reduced hay acres we all have seen in 2019. Unfortunately, we will loose 100 acres of Alfalfa -grass mix hay acres because of the winter kill of 2019. These 2 fields will be planted to Teff grass for 1 year, in June 2020 as a necessary intermediate step to replanting these fields back to Alfalfa & mixed grass hay crop. The positive side of this is:

1.The opportunity to replace the alfalfa plants with young, fine stemmed plants for great quality & palatability.

2.The opportunity to smooth-out the hay fields ;)

3.The opportunity to apply ag lime and deep root fertilizers and micro-nutrients, in order to balance the soil fertility and thus increase yield and plant health.

4.A good grass hay crop for 1 year (Teff in 2020).

5.The unfortunate part of this is:

a.Cost

b.Time delay to get back into the acres of mixed hay production we had prior to the killing winter for the 2019 season. We are currently configuring our new hay baler for small square bales. It is an "in-line" baler, that makes better quality bales! It will also be configured with our hay moisture testing, real-time moisture read-out in the tractor cab. We will also weigh each bale so we know if the hay is too heavy etc. All this for quality.

We also have a round baler and a big square baler. They are designed the same way for maximum quality.