• Wednesday-What'sUP July 27 - 11:05 pm

When many folks here in the U.P. are heading to the beach to escape the heat of summer, farmers and ranchers are out there in the fields, busily baling hay for the coming winter. Connie Mandoli snapped a few photos of someone's hay field near Otter Lake, where all that's left is to head out there with a truck and trailer to haul the bales back near the barn. I like the way they look, scattered all over like they grew right there in that spot.

Connie's last photo, is also from the Otter Lake area, where she captured some brightly colored flowers, still adorning the old abandoned farm buildings. They must be pretty hardy flora, to keep coming up year after year with no one there to tend them. Sure is a nice splash of color!

Love the smell of hay!!

We had our hay day fun 2 weeks ago.

Hay there, nice photos! There is also an Otter Lake Village in SE-MI that happens to be one of my favorite weekend cruise destinations on the moo-moo.

The orange flowers look like daylilies to me ... love that photo!

The roadside daylilies tend to be invasive. But still very colorful.

Neat pics...I remember "making hay" with the neighbor kids when younger, pitching it onto a haywagon, riding on top of the load...talk about getting itchy and pricked from the hay. This activity today sure beats the old.

Making hay today usually is very different than when my boys helped bale.Those days the bales were heavy,scratchy rectangles. Lifted up usually by hand and stacked on the wagons. Then sent up an elevater to the hay mow. Now these large round bales are done differently I guess.That was one way to earn spending money. That and detasseling corn. Another hard, dirty job. We had two 14 year old girls killed just this week near by. Some kind of contact with a field irrigation system! RIP girls.

Say ya to da UP, hay!

Mskatie, I'm sure the round bales of hay are somewhat of an improvement, but I loved to see the hay 'squares/rectangles' in the fields years ago. Another thing I miss seeing is 'shocked corn'. That still can be seen in the local Amish fields. I can almost smell 'em both! :>

One of those good old guys from WW2 was fond of saying "the new round bales have been outlawed because it was found that the cows weren't getting a square meal". RIP Sandy

Hay, hay, hay!

I'm curious. About how much do these round hay bales weigh? Aren't they more difficult to handle than the smaller square bales? Where are they stored for the winter? I would think they are too much weight for the hay mow. I have wondered about these hay bales and decided to ask and let everyone know of my ignorance!

AJ...if you have quite a number of livestock this is the best and easiest way to feed. Especially cattle. There are several size balers that make these big bales from 1000 lbs to 1800 lbs. They are moved with a tractor with big bale spears, and there are trailers made specially to move 6 these bales at a time. Generally they are stored outside or in leanways of a barn to get to them easy. Big bale baling really does not involve with manual labor and everything involving making them you are in the tractor. My dad used these when we had 40 head of cattle. He would put 5 out at a time replacing them every 4 or 5 days. I do not like them with horses because most of the time they sit outside to be stored and the outside layers weather and or rot, a lot of waste. I feed my 13 horses the big squares. Each of these is about 20 bales, 8ft x 3ft x 3ft. of the common small square bales. We have a 16 ft. car trailer, Gordon loads 4 of these with his inloader then we bring them home, back the trailer in our barn. 4 big squares lasts me for 5 weeks.

Thank you, Janie: I have wondered about this when I saw them out in the fields. I appreciate your very detailed explanation. Whenever I asked about them, nobody could answer my question, so perhaps you have enlightened folks other than myself! Makes sense to me now. I wondered about the effect of the weather if they were not stored in the barn. Thanks!

Another reason why they are big hits with larger livestock herds, one man and the machinery versus many hours of man power. Like anything today, it's all about convenience.

Round bales should be changed to the square bales so the cattle can get one square meal a day. :)

AJ...not sure how clear I was now reading back my earlier post...A big round bale = 25 small sq. 55lb. bale. A big sq. bale,(8'x 3'x 3') = 20 small 55lb. bale. The big sq. bale weighs 800lbs. These are stored in barns because they are easier to stack and moved with a skid loader or inloader.

Dickingrayling, I like your friend's theory! My horses get those square meals!

Every once in a while one may see these big round bales decorated humorously to look like caterpillar sections with a made up face on the leading bale. Also some of the round ones are wrapped with what I gather are plastic "coats". Must be rot prevention . Hope we could dig up a photo or two of such playfulness :)

Actually Katie the wrap is a mesh wrap used to keep the bales together instead of using baling twine.

I remember reading about some horses getting sick a while back and they traced it back to the hay. If I remember correctly, a few died. The hay had gotten damp and developed a bacteria. There were a few lawsuits too.

Alex, this is why I do not feed big bales to my horses anymore since my dad passed on. They can retain moisture, then spoil if done to quickly because doing hay this way is a time saver. When dad made big bales he did it right, he mowed hay dry, raked dry, then baled dry. Horses do not have 4 stomachs as a cattle do, so colic and other digestive ailments are more likely to happen with bad/moldy big bales. Cattle can get away with this. My hay man does his own hay, the same way dad made hay and feeds his own horses his hay. But he does the big squares.

The round bales really add to the scenery of
the U.P. I really like how they look on the fields. They photo graph nice in early morning
or late in the day light.

Great Photos Connie!
Scenes like this just across the road from us! They just did both square standard bales and the big rounds about a week ago. Got pics of all the crew doing the work! He often "shrink wraps" the rounds or just cover them with tarps and they get left outside. Even tho everything was late this season still should be time for a second cutting here. Really impressed with Janie T's knowledge of this! Right on! Down here the Hawks love to sit on the rounds and eye the fields for a mouse, vole, or snake meal!
BTW Connie is my cousin!

Russell, it's all hands on knowledge. I always enjoyed the hay season on the farm!

That old house with the tiger lilies is the house where my Grandmother was born. It belonged to Henry Keranen, my Great-Grandfather. I'm so excited to see it on the Pasty Cam!