Spring 2022 Hay

I never got around to finishing this post about last year's hay-cutting, but it's apropos for what's going on now on the Sutherland Place. So far two fields have been cut and baled this week, but several fields are yet to be cut. A chance of storms has postponed cutting for a while—just like this time last year.

The fields look pretty much alike from year to year.

On a Saturday in mid-June 2022, the last of the spring hay was cut on the Sutherland Place. Part of it had already been cut, raked, baled, and hauled away a week earlier, but forecasts for bad weather had postponed cutting the rest. 

Here's what the fields looked like on that Saturday. A year later, they still look the same.

One of the tractors used for raking:

These last hayfelds are near what used to be William Milton Sutherland's home.  He was the grandson of the original owner, Philomen Sutherland. The house—actually a double-pen log cabin covered in clapboarding—still stands, but parts of it are collapsing, so its days are numbered.

While hay was cut close to the house, a little weedy patch in the midst of the field was left alone. It's where the hearth for the long-gone kitchen was. The kitchen was midway between the side door and the henhouse.

Here's a closer look at the door:

The top of the chimney is missing, and the bottom has collapsed. Part of the cabin's front (the left side, not shown) has bowed out. 

The back of the cabin still looks straight, but looks are deceptive.

Below is what's left of the henhouse.

Beside the big hayfield is a large barn that's starting to fall in.

A different view:  

And a closer look:

In its heyday,  lot of hay was pitched into the loft . . .

. . . but the loft is long gone and the methods of making hay have changed.

In the middle of one of the smaller hayfields is what's left of an old tobacco barn. 

Here's a view from the other side.

Looking from the remains of the old tobacco barn, the big barn is at the left and what used to be an equipment shed is farther down the hill. Some of the round bales are beyond the tractor.

Farming has changed a lot since Phil Sutherland arrived in the 1790s with his young bride Fannie; and since Milton Sutherland raised his family in the cabin in the mid-1800s, went off to war, and returned to take up farming—but haying is still done every spring and fall.

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Cutting Corn 2017

Across the nation bad things are happening—floods in Texas, wildfire in Montana and other states out west, the threat of deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, the threat of nuclear war with North Korea.

In my neighborhood, about all that's appening is corn being cut for silage. The field across from me was cut yesterday. Last week ago, the GMO corn (which needs an application of Round-Up to grow) towered over the road.

Yesterday, the cutting began.

I'd been taking a nap when the rumbling of a tractor and trucks woke me up. A truck pulls alongside the tractor that's cutting the corn.

When the truck is full, it moves away and another takes its place.

Meanwhile the tractor keeps moving. So does a truck.

And the pattern repeats. Over and over. . . . 

By evening, most of the field is bare.

Silage blown off from the over-filled trucks litters the road.

Today, except for a few stalks that the tractor missed, the field is bare.

Except for a few buzzards that glean any little critters killed in the harvest.

This corn silage will be used to feed the cattle at a big dairy farm down the road. Of course, traces of  the glyphosate needed to grow the genetically modified corn will end up in the milk. 

And it will end up in the milk drinkers, too.

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Hay June 2016

It's been a good year for hay, and last week was perfect hay-making weather—dry, hot, and windy. Our hay isn't finished yet. The Brown Farm is still  in progress, but Polecat Creek and Smith Farm are done. Polecat Creek made 75 bales; Smith Farm 72.

Here are pictures of the point and front fields at Polecat Creek Farm and the front field at Smith Farm:

 

 

 

 

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Silage Cutting

One of the signs of impending autumn is the cutting of corn for silage. The GMO corn across the road was cut a couple of weeks ago. It had gotten really tall this year and was kind of oppressive. This is how it looked in mid-August:

With so little rain in the area, the corn had been getting progressively drier. 

On Friday, August 28, cutting began in earnest. When I came home from a meeting, debris that had blown out of the silage trucks was all over the road.

 While one truck went to the dairy farm down the road to unload, another returned, while yet another was being filled.

Now a few rows  of dead dry corn still stand here and there, no doubt for the convenience of dove hunters. Dove season started September 3.

 

 

One little problem for the dove hunters, though—no doves.

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