What Attracted You To Galusha Farm?

It includes 5 automated fans located at floor level, on three walls. It also includes two larger fans on 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 hayfield front, we were fortunate to have planted between the rains-67 acres of new hayfield production acres. It could not have happened at a better time, just in time to help make up for the reduced hay acres we all have seen in 2019. Unfortunately, we will lose 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 and 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 and palatability

2. The opportunity to smooth the hayfields

3. The opportunity to apply 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. 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. All this for quality. We also have a round baler and a big square baler. They are designed the same way for maximum quality.