Hay Stories #4 (Steffi Schaffler, Scotland)

Making hay is, with ploughing the land, in my opinion one of them most essential parts of farming. When we bought our land six years ago it was always our dream to make hay with our horses. We bought the land with a load of equipment, all you need for making hay on a small scale with machinery. But all of it was old and had it’s quirks. The mower did one season, the baler played up every year…

We got the chance to buy a I&J mower a few years ago but ever since the weather has been Scottish or we were busy when the sun was there. Scotland has a climate that isn’t ideal for hay. Dry weather is often short and in parts of the country the average rainy days are about 250 (the sun shines most of these days as well though). The saying about hay around here is that it needs a wash. Which is probably just stating the fact that it will get one. The other issue with cutting with horses is that the grass grows really thick and mowing later in the year is literally impossible with the finger bar mower and ground drive.

So this year when the weather looked decent in June we took the chance. It is early for hay but we had the time and we thought we give it a try. The mowing went fine, horses sweated on the first field. We knew there would be rain on the day after so we got them out again after supper and cut the smaller field.  After the rain we started turning it out. We had bought a Dickies Harris hay turner in the spring. It came out of someone’s shed and after fifty years in storage went to work beautifully. It is simple, turns and rows up the hay and was made about 50 miles from here.

We had about six days including the day it rained to get the hay in and dry. The weather was forecast hot, which it was, but unfortunately it stayed humid and overcast a lot. So come day five we couldn’t really bale it. We tried the baler, got frustrated and decided to wait for the next day. I went out with the horses and rowed it all up again ready for baling. We got the baler going but the hay was really heavy still. Sitting down for lunch it was starting to drizzle.  We went back down, started baling and it suddenly just started raining so hard you couldn’t see out the window….

We sat in the Landrover and didn’t know if to laugh or to cry. We had always said that this year would just be a trial if we could actually do it with horses. We had done it, and worked so hard, sweated so much. And all for nothing? And we still had to get it off the field? Compost?

I phoned my neighbour and got the number of his contractor. Half an hour later the biggest tractor turned up with a rake half the size of our field. And hour after that six neatly wrapped bales of haylage were dotted around the green.

It always has been a dream of ours and we have done it. Sort of. We are lucky that we live in a time where our winter does not really depend on the outcome of the hay. We would be hungry. And I love the connections with our farming neighbours round here, who don’t ask twice but just come and help. We needed to cut some trees back to get their tractors in but nobody made fun of us trying with the horses. They all came and helped.

The horses did great, they are used to very different sort of work. Logging as singles. Having them work as a pair on the pole for a week was lovely.

Hopefully we get better at it, and maybe we will find a way of bringing it in loose….dream on.

About the author:

Steffi, born in Munich, Germany, went to Scotland after finishing school to volunteer in a Camphill Community. She studied organic farming at Kassel University, Germany and went back to Scotland to take on a large mixed biodinamic farm at Camphill Loch Arthur. She left after seven years to start an apprenticeship in Horse Logging and has working horses in woodlands ever since. With her husband and daughter she lives on a small holding in the south west of Scotland that next to vegetables, chickens, geese and lots of horses also is home to two Jersey Oxen. She is chair of the British Horse Loggers and enjoys milking the Jersey herd next door in her spare time.