Hay trip....

Went and bought hay yesterday. Waited for over a 1/2 hour for Grandpa Don to get down to the hay barns to load me. It was 9:15am, so he was probably eating breakfast, which is what he was doing Mon. morning when I went down, but all they had was alfalfa, and his son Gary was going to be in that night with a load of grass. They have their own Semi and haul hay from Eastern Oregon and Washington themselves.

It is pretty good looking hay. The girls love this fine orchard grass, there is just a little bit of alfalfa in it. The bales are about 100lbs and were $14 a bale. The stuff that I have been getting is a lot coarser and stemy, hard for Easy to eat, they clean up every blade of this stuff! There is a lot of waste with Easy and the coarse hay, she just cant chew it. The last hay I bought was $11 a bale, so this is worth a couple more dollars. Don also told me that grass may get scarce by the end of Summer, because of exporting to Japan!!! Just what we need. I would love to put up a few ton at a time, but money and man power (lack of) dont allow me to. These pics are taken from where I parked in front of the hay barns, taken from my Iphone. I usually buy 6-8 bales at a time, enough to last 2 weeks. These are 20 bales to the ton, lol easy math when they are 100lbs! LOL We only live a mile from the Dairy so its easier to let them store it! LOL Although the draw back to that is I dont always get the same kind of hay every time.

This is the Dairy. It has been here a long long time. I think Dons Dad started it and Don is 70!! Yes at 70 he still runs the tractor to load the hay. His son Gary has been running the farm for some time now, along with his younger brother. Gary's boys help out now too, they are the 4th generation on the farm!!! They are a great family too! I have been buying hay here for 20 years! I dont know how old the Dairy is exactly but it is well over 100 I am sure!!! Hows that for history!! LOL Both boys have houses on the property too, one behind the main old house in the pic, and one across the road from the hay barns, to the left of this pic.
In this last pic, the big barn on the left is the main Dairy barn, to the left of that is the silage bin. Across the road, yes the road splits the farm in two. is the main house, and more storage barns. You see the tallest barn on the left, years ago from the loft in the top of that barn there used to be a ramp that they would take teams of horses with the loads of loose hay up. The ramp ran from the loft across what is now the road, to where the drive is in front of the house!! I have seen a photo of this, I need to get a pic of the copy that my sis in law has, it was pretty darn impressive!!! I have never taken a tour of the Dairy, I see schools touring every once and awhile, I need to, it would be neat to see.