When you are a grass-based farm in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, hay is essential. It’s more than essential — your animals will have nothing to eat all winter without it. All through the cold, wet, and snowy months of the year, the sheep, donkeys, pigs, and even the poultry thrive on the stored-up sunshine and rain packed away in bales.
Well-managed pastures and hayfields sequester carbon faster than trees and are a key piece of how we regeneratively steward the land in our care.
When we began our homestead adventures more than 25 years ago, we made our own hay with put-put equipment from the 1950s and 60s. It took at least three days to cut the fields and pasture, and baling included stacking onto the wagon by hand. Anyone who grew up helping make hay in years past knows exactly what we were up against!
The equipment was old and in constant need of repairs and new shear pins, and then we opened Farmstead Creamery. First crop hay and the 4th of July holiday (the busiest time of the summer season) always have a way of colliding, and we were stretched too thin to squeeze haymaking into the mix as well.