
We are a highly diversified farm, growing countless types of vegetables, fruits, and flowers and even within a single type of vegetable, often many varieties of each. We don’t just grow food for humans though; we’re also growing food for countless soil microorganisms and macroorganisms, including our sheep!
Our sheep graze on fields of cover crops and vegetable crops (once we’re done harvesting them) but there are times of the year, especially in winter, when this isn’t an option so we feed them hay. For those who, like me, need a reminder, hay is cut green from the entire plant and is used for animal feed. It can be a number of different crops. We’re currently growing alfalfa for hay. Straw is just the dry stalks left behind after a grain crop is harvested and is used for bedding or mulch, not a food source.
The Beet from two weeks ago (which you can read here) had a picture of the alfalfa crop mid harvest. After letting it dry, we got it out of the field with the help of two machines: a hay baler and a bale wagon. Here’s a video of Rye using both pieces of (very vintage and very loud) equipment:
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