Egg Report: Hay…Bale It All Summer & Feed It All Winter
Selected "Egg Reports" from the Fiedler Family Pig Farm will be coming fresh from Bloomington, Indiana.The weekly “Egg Report” is about life on the Fiedler Family Farm.  Jim sells at the farmers’ market in Louisville, Kentucky.  Rebekah goes to the farmers market in Bloomington, Indiana. 

From Jim, former Wall Street Energy trader:

“I also am an engineer but Chemical rather than Mechanical like Rebekah.  And I too was told all my life that Engineers can’t write which I believed and only found that I might have writing talent when I penned a very long story about delivering our Maisie in our teeny bathroom in NYC.  Friends wanted to know what we were doing when we returned to my heritage farm 6 ½ years ago (six months after 9/11) and Bob Ayres said, ‘Just  send an email telling us how many eggs you get each day!’ So the Egg Report soon evolved into a sort of my own rural Indiana ‘Year in Provence’.  Its frequency became less and less until I finally stopped it altogether as “living the life” replaced writing about it.  The writing bug stayed with me since it is also excellent therapy and I started writing the Egg Reports again this past summer as part of my market email.”

January 2009

Mandy said, “You DID spend the whole summer baling hay, didn’t you?”  Matt & Mandy were visiting us the day after Christmas to pick up a boar hog.  It was overwhelming to show them the long rows of round haylage bales wrapped in white plastic that seemed like endless sausages waiting to be served to the cattle.  I must have said something to the effect, “I feel like I spent the whole summer baling them and now I spend the whole winter feeding them!”

Farming is ninety percent repetition of endless chores interrupted by those moments of absolute beauty and bliss that make it all worthwhile.  One of those moments occurred this morning as Rebekah and I were driving Maisie and Tommy to school after a two hour delayed opening due a light snow.  We had just pulled out our driveway as I looked across the Dhonau Place toward the Ohio River and Kentucky when I blurted out, “There is a Bald Eagle flying over Bear Creek.”  Rebekah replied, “No way!”  We have Bald Eagles here along the Ohio River but I hadn’t seen one since early last summer.  JIZZ is a birder’s term for identifying a distant bird just by some mysterious impression of the shape and size and vibes it gives off without any of the identifying markings.  I always thought it came from the term GISS which was used by pilots in WWII to identify planes by their “General Impression of Shape & Size” but Wikipedia says this is impossible since birders first recorded using the term in 1920.  There was just something about the way it glided in the distance with its long wings held level to its dark body not flapping at all.  Then it slowly turned and showed us its white head and tail as it circled nearer.  We both said, “Wow!”

We fed square bales to the cattle from the barn’s mow into the mangers down below when I was a kid.  We thought cows were like us and needed the warmth of the barn to survive the cold winters.  Later we learned that cows locked in barns spread diseases like people jammed into a subway car and they have a fur coat which keeps them warm outside in the cold.  So last summer I baled over 1,600 round bales that weigh over a half ton each and now we feed them to cattle outside with a tractor and hay spears on the back and the front.

Kenneth used to roll the bales down the hill and watch the cows run and kick their heels in pure freedom and joy as they chased the long ribbon of hay unfurl in front of them.  I still enjoy feeding them that way and I think the cows enjoy it too.  The steeper the hill the better.  They also love to butt the bale and try to tear it apart when it is rolling and especially when it stops.

We feed anywhere from 10 to 15 of these large round bales every day this time of year with so many cattle.  Sometimes the ground is frozen or dry but too often it is muddy and wet.  And I now have JR to help me four days a week which really means I only have to do it on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  Not all the hay is rolled down steep hills.  We have four hay wagon feeders into which 4 or 5 bales can be loaded and then hauled out to the pasture with the tractor.  Usually an empty wagon can then be hooked up and pulled back to the hay storage area.  That way one trip though the mud with the tractor instead of five if they were hauled one at a time.  The downside is the cattle tend to make mud troughs on each side of the wagons.

Ring steel feeders that hold single bales are also used as are other steel feeders that cradle the bales above the ground.  The mud is not that bad if these are moved each time a new bale is added.  And sometimes a bale is just taken and dropped in the woods is that is the only dry spot around.  We have enough hay this year to give the pigs a bale from time to time.  They surprisingly eat a lot of it and use the rest to sleep on.  And the sheep get a bale about every other day.  This is not rocket science!  And sometimes I even use the new tractor with the cab, heater and radio.

Of course the most efficient way to feed cattle is to let them harvest the grass themselves instead of baling and feeding it to them.  A bale of hay is the most expensive thing on the farm when all the equipment, labor and fuel are taken into account.  We now stockpile some grass and strip graze it in the winter and have tried wheat and other winter annuals but the mud in this area makes it more difficult that further north or out west where the ground just freezes and stays that way for several months.  But that is still a long term goal toward which we work.

Meanwhile, it will only be four months until mid-May when I can start baling hay again!

Your Farmer & Agrarian Philosopher,
Jim Fiedler