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Ledge Spring Farm

Hay Maker's Journal

By Donn Hewes

Entry 1: May 29th, 2025

Intro:  This summer I plan to collect thoughts and information on a daily basis as we make hay this summer.  We have made hay here at the Northland Sheep Farm with mainly draft horse power for the last 23 years.  This winter we are feeding 36 sheep, one cow, and seven horses.  We started feeding in Nov. with just over 2000 small square bales of first cutting and about 800 small square bales of second cutting.  At the moment it looks like we will run out of hay just on time around the end of April. We have always been 100% grass fed and feed no grain.  Most of our horses eat first cutting and get no grain, but over the years I have given a little to older horses that may have been nursing foals or losing weight for whatever reason.  We have usually made most of our hay; 85 or 90%, but have often bought a little from a neighbor to make sure we had enough.

We will use four horses this summer along with four farmers and one intern to mow, ted, and rake our hay.  We then switch over to a small tractor to bale the hay.

After a long and rainy April and May, we are just starting to see some clearing skies.  That is time to get the equipment out of storage and ready to work.  We use two mowers.  A McCormick Deering #7 with a 6 foot bar and a IH #9 with a 7 foot bar.  Two days ago I used a team to move them from the shed to the shop and tighten a few bolts.  Today I used some oil to spin the knives and see if everything seemed ready.  Both these machines have been used for many years in a row, but they have also both seen some degree of rebuilding and maintenance over the years.

Entry 2: June 20th, 2025

Well we finally started mowing first cutting today after a solid couple months of rain.  All the fields are still soft with high soil moisture.  The grass is thick and green but not super tall; Not enough sun and saturated soils don’t grow hay much better than a dry spell.  Since it rained a little yesterday, we only wanted a couple hours of mowing at the end of the day.  We used two teams of Suffolk Punch horses.  Red Oak (7 yo Stud) and Rock (14 yo gelding)  pulled the #7 mower and Anya and Belle, a Mother / Daughter team here for some work and breeding, pulled the #9.  While we work in a 40 acre hay field, we don’t begin to mow the whole thing at once.  Mowed around about 8 acres that we hope to hay in this hay “window” and only mowed about 3 acres today.  Hopefully the rest will fall tomorrow.

The weather was a very comfortable 75 F (24 C) degrees with a strong breeze from the NW.  Very nice conditions for the horses, but the wind was strong enough to make the mowing a little harder by covering the clear path our grassboard had made. 

Above: The first two entries Donn has been writing a series of entries that have been included in the A Year on the Field Project, a project that seeks to gather and exchange knowledge about specific cultivation practices for various crops. This year's focus is hay, and the project's blog features Donn's journal along with several others. Portions of Donn's Journal may also appear in Rural Heritage, one DAPNet's sponsors. 

Haying With Horses

Wes Lupher

My ranch is a 200–225 head cow/calf operation, plus 25 replacements and 16 horses. At
7,000 ft elevation, with pastures up to 8,500 ft, we require two tons of hay per cow to get through an average winter.

Our hay is all grass hay—a mix of native and introduced grasses such as timothy, red top,
white clover, brome, and alsike clover. I use several different haying systems. I have a small
square baler, a round baler, and loose hay equipment. Hay stored in fields that must be hauled is put up in round bales. Loose hay management depends on help available; some years as much as 100 tons goes up loose. We’ll bale as many as 2,000 small square bales for various chores,though some years may be around 500.

Being in an area with less than six inches of rainfall, we flood irrigate hay meadows with snowmelt from the Uinta Mountains to the north, whose peaks approach 14,000 ft elevation.
Most years we mow the majority of hay with horses and mules. I have five McCormick ground-drive mowers that we use when help and horse availability permit. My main mowers are seven- and nine-foot I&J motor-driven units. I also use a power cart and a nine-foot haybine on occasion, and we run the square baler as well.

I do use fertilizers, some conventional and some organic. In recent years we’ve been
leaning more toward organic, using our own manure from the corrals and weaning lots. A couple of decades ago I began relying more on horses and mules as my tractors aged. I had always used a team or two around the ranch, but I didn’t use them much beyond feeding cows. I’ll admit, I was goaded into using the first horse mower when a neighbor teased me about fixing up a six-foot Number 9 mower. At first I mowed along his fenceline to prove a point. The more I used it, the more I realized it could be an asset. For a few years it was a six-foot McCormick and a 430 John Deere with a seven-foot New Holland mower. We covered around 160 acres then, compared with the 400 acres we do now. 

Through my experiences I’ve found that horses can be a viable asset on a ranch. My old tractors see limited usage and tend to last longer because the horses do much of the work. I tend to move horses at 10–12 years old, so they have plenty of good years left for the people who get them. We work a lot with young horses and break colts for people every year. My thoughts on loose hay, at least in my environment, are that it keeps much better in stacks than other methods. I’ve fed five-year-old loose hay that was still excellent after removing the outer 2–3 inches, but you’d better put a good roof on it or the snow will melt in a depression and spoil a lot. The mark of a good stack is if the sides are too steep for an elk to climb, as my dad would say, and you’ve got a roof that will shed water.

All of us can adapt many things to make our horses useful, both in putting up hay and
feeding it out. A big part of the allure, to me, is challenging myself and my horses to achieve success with chores and work that many think impossible without a tractor. Feeding cattle can be tedious (the same goes for cutting and baling hay) when using a tractor. Draft animals require constant communication, whether verbal or through the lines. That is another great draw for me personally.

I admire him for making it work, though I can’t help but curse as we put up loose hay. You learn to know the wetter patches in the fields, careful not to gather damp hay. The fields are plowed with ridges and furrows that channel the water away. This, my friends, makes loose hay very interesting.

With a 14-foot hay wagon in an uneven field, you’re adjusting the horses’ pace almost constantly, especially at the start of the season. The balance of driving a team with a wagon and a hay loader lies in attuning with the person spreading the hay. You must make sure they stay steady, and the hay flows at just the right rhythm into their fork.

Those ridges and furrows present their own challenge. Even though you plan your crops to avoid crossing the largest ones fully loaded, you will have to cross some. And when the horses pull a filled wagon, you must hold them steady down the slopes and let them pull free on the rise. The transition between holding the team back and letting them pull forward is delicate and must be as smooth as possible to prevent the horses from hitting their harnesses too hard and pulling abruptly the wagon over the hill. Fail at that, and you’ll hear Paul tumble into the hay behind you, laughing and shouting, “Whooooaaww!” The horses stop, you’re stranded halfway on a furrow, and restarting the load becomes a more difficult task for the horses. That is one way to discourage horses from pulling a wagon if it happens too often in a day.

I’m sure you’ve guessed the theme of our newsletter: making hay with draft animal power. And what better way to begin than with a story from Paul Chaperon’s farm, where he’s been putting up loose hay for over 60 years.

Coming up next, we’ll share more stories, essays, and articles about haymaking from Wes Lupher and Donn Hewes.

While I keep myself busy logging with my older gelding, Fred, and haying with the younger one, Aurèle, I’ve also been deeply involved in preparing for our upcoming field days. Trust me it’s a lot of work, sometimes requiring the dexterity needed to drive the team over a furrow loaded with hay. 

Nonetheless, we’re gearing up for an amazing event at Sanborn Mills Farm from October 3rd to 5th! Registration is open! if you’re passionate about working animals, you won’t want to miss it!

See you there,

Daphné,

Events Committee Chair and Board Member of DAPNet.

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