Hay Makers Journal, Donn Hewes, Part I
- Year On the Field Project
- Jul 11
- 9 min read
We are happy to share the first part of Donn Hewes`s (Northland Sheep Farm, USA) Hay Makers Journal that he started for A Year On The Field:
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 McCormack 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.
Entry 3 June 21st, 2025
Well, of course it rained .25” last night after we just started mowing for the year. Of course I have made lots of hay that was rained on, and actually rained on right after mowing is less damaging than after the hay is all but dry.
Today we used two teams of horses to mow for about 2 hours in the afternoon. We almost finished the 8 acre piece started the day before when I broke a lift spring. I have never broken one of these in 20 years, but lately my Amish neighbors have broken a few so fortunately I had a new one in the mower shop. The repair only took about an hour, but that was enough to quit for the day. Just a small triangle to mow tomorrow.
The weather was a little more overcast than expected and that made the working conditions not too bad for horses and people with a temperature about 85 F. (29.5 C).
Entry 4 June 22nd, 2025
Now as we get up for our morning tea at 5 am we are confronted with a strong line of thunderstorms that were not in the forecast! We now have a lot of hay on the ground and all getting nicely wet. We will just have to see what the day brings. 1.25” of rain! Can we even work in the fields tomorrow?
Entry 5 June 23rd, 2025
It was hot and steamy with wet wheels today as I started to ted the rain out of the hay we mowed the last couple days. Tedding is a term we use in North America which might be hard to translate. It would be similar to “flipping” tossing” or “fluffing” the hay just to lift it off the ground and get some air flowing through it. It will speed up the drying of any green hay, but it is almost impossible to make hay that has been rained on without some way to fluff it. I use a four star rotary tedder pulled by a homemade PTO cart and three horses.
The temperature was near 90 F (32 C) and the humidity was just about one million! Seriously, with over an inch of rain the day before it was very hot hard work for horses. I would stop and find some shade for 10 minutes out of 30. I did half before lunch, and then let the horses rest in the barn for an hour and then finished by switching out one mare and continuing with the gelding and stallion doing the double shift. About 2 hours before lunch and one and half hours after lunch do about 7 acres. Usually this rig will do three acres an hour, but not today. Hopefully tomorrow we will see some raking and baling before rain returns Wed and Thur.
Entry 6 June 24th, 2025
Yesterday was unfortunately not a great day for hay making. We gave it a real good effort but it was not to be. I used horses in the morning and tried to rake (still too wet) and then tried to ted, but in most areas the hay was already dry; so I was wasting my time. On top of that it was too hot and humid for horses to work. I have only had a few days in all the years of hay making where I wouldn’t use horses. Later in the afternoon I used a tractor to do some raking (because I would really like to get this off the field), and once again the hay itself is dry, but the ground is too wet and soft. We baled 72 bales before we got the tractor stuck.
After unhooking the tractor from the baler and the wagon it got itself out of the field and the horses had to get re harnessed to rescue the baler and the wagon of hay. There is still lots of hay to make this year so let’s hope this is the worst story of the summer. Tomorrow we will try again to get some of this hay off the field if the weather permits.
Daily Bale total: 72 Annual total: 72
Entry 7 June 25th, 2025
We finally got the hay off of this little section. The temperatures and humidity have relented a little and I used three horses to re-rake (turn over the windrows that were raked the day before). It turns out the biggest challenge the day before was how wet and soft the fields were. Today that was just a little better which meant we could use the tractor to pull the baler and wagon without getting stuck and make some pretty low quality hay. We made 240 small square bales. I guess they averaged 50 pounds which is a little heavier than we would like.
Why is it so important to get this hay off the field? We have enough acres of hay ground we could ignore this hay and let animals graze it later this summer and make hay here again next year without even picking up these windrows. Because this might be the only hay we mow in June this is also our best chance to make any second cutting. This will grow back faster and heavier than any first cutting mowed later in the summer. That is the main reason we were so determined to get it off the field.
Daily Bale total: 240 Annual total: 312
Entry 8 June 28th, 2025
We mowed 4 acres this morning. I knew it might rain, but wanted to keep moving ahead. My hope was that this would be a light hay area and with two hot days it would make hay in a short time. As soon as we started mowing we realized instead of “light” It was super thick and lush where I had spread some composted manure last fall. This kind of spreading seems to encourage a ton of red clover. I knew right away that this was going to be more like 5 days to dry than two! We used two teams, and despite plugging the mowers some we made quick work of it.
Due to temps in the mid 80’s and high humidity the horses were hot when we were done in two hours.
Entry 9 June 30th, 2025
Tedded the 4 acres this morning. Fortunately it only takes just over and hour to ted ted with one team of three about four acres. I used fourth gear on the tedder which makes it turn slower. Perfect when you are planning for the hay to get rained on; which it did.
About .3” of rain in the afternoon.
Entry 10 July 1th, 2025
Tedded the hay again today. This time I was really hoping it would NOT rain on the hay again and was terdding based on that idea, but alas it rained another .2” later in the afternoon. UGH! The forecast for tomorrow is good and my plan is to ted, rake and bale. We will see.
Entry 11 July 2th, 2025
I started tedding hay at 10 am and was done by 11:15 for four acres. I started raking the at 1;30 pm amd was done in about an hour. Maryrose and I alternated some tractor driving and bale wagon unloading while farmer Becky Frye (horsetail Herb Farm) and Intern Jazmine Albin did some furious stacking of dry but heavy bales. Interestingly the hay production in this area of the field is way higher than where we baled a week ago. Of course it is an area that I had done some significant spreading of compost on last fall. It went from about 45 bales per acre last week to about 75 bales per acre this week. Despite .5” rain and tedding three times this hay quality was better than last week too - Let’s hope next week we can finally make some green hay without rain!
Daily Bale total: 287 Annual total: 599
Entry 12 July 4th, 2025
No big holiday here; Just mowing a lot of hay. Mowing in 77 degree weather with a nice breeze and a forecast of three sunny days is sort of a holiday I suppose. We started with two teams and two mowers at 10 am and mowed almost exactly two hours. After lunch we hooked a team to mow about 150 row feet of Lemon Balm for harvest in Becky’s garden and then I mowed for two more hours in the hay field. The ground is a little flatter now, and there is a great stand of trees at one end to rest under. I would guess we mowed just over 6 acres today.
I also took a few minutes this morning to freshen up one of the mowers. I took the knife out and sharpened the guards with an angle grinder, this is a good trick for the haybine type guards when they lose their edge. Then I tightened a few of the adjustable hold downs that keep the knife against the guards nice and close.
Entry 13 July 5th, 2025
It was a good bit of tedding today in temperatures around 82 degrees. I started harnessing a team of three around 10:30 and tedded hay from 11 am to 1 pm. I added a green 6 yo mare who is visiting for the summer and just learning the ropes so that was the added challenge for the day. The ground is getting much drier under our feet and combined with the later stage of maturity the hay is starting dry much faster. Tedding at a slow speed will allow me to preserve some more green in the hay while still giving it sufficient time and air to dry fully by tomorrow.
The tedder “tenting” the hay up nicely, and the shifters of a Case VAC tractor that allow me to change gears to speed or slow the tedder.
Entry 14 July 6th, 2025
It was a hot 89 degree day and humid but we made some nice bales. Red, Rock and Anya pulled the twin rakes for a solid two hours to windrow about seven acres. We started raking at 11 am and were done at 1 pm. The baling crew with a tractor started at 2 pm and despite a few baler issues we made and stacked 370 by 6 pm. This baler has been neat error free for the last couple years , but today it was suggesting something might be off just a touch. We shall see. Gelding Rock was also looking a little lame today. He has a tendency to bruise the heel of his front hoofs and I will trim a little and rest him today. He has been an important worker this year so hopefully we can avoid a big disruption.
Daily Bale total: 370 Annual total: 969
About the authors:
Donn Hewes and Maryrose Livingston
Northland Sheep Farm3501 Hoxie Gorge - Freetown Rd.Marathon, NY 13803 USA
Really enjoyed this, being very close to the day-to-day work. Thank you. Cozette