As I write this in mid-September, harvest has begun in my area of west central Indiana. The crops (corn and soybeans) look good and I expect we will be blessed with a bountiful harvest. Those of us living in the Midwest are very fortunate compared to others in our country who are experiencing terrible problems with global warming such as horrendous fires and drought in the western states, not to mention those who have lost their homes to fire, floods, etc.

Many of those who do manage to get a crop of grocery store foods can’t find workers to harvest it, resulting in crops of food rotting on the ground. Many ranchers in western states are having to sell off whole herds of livestock for lack of pasture and hay. So far, we in the Midwest have had adequate rain rather than torrential flooding rains the East and South have been experiencing. Yes, we are indeed blessed to live in the Midwest.

And for those of us fortunate enough to live in a HOUSE with a roof over our heads, count that as a tremendous blessing because at the present time there are many people throughout the world and even in our own country who do not have a home. I expect housing and food will increase in cost and price over the next few years.

I have spent the past several days working on MY crop of hay for winter feed for my other crop – lambs and goat kids. Since it has been rather dry here for the past few weeks (global warming?), my second cutting grass-alfalfa-clover hay for small square bales has been a bit thin, whereas my neighbor’s alfalfa crop has produced four-five cuttings despite the shortfall of rain.

But I’m grateful to at least get SOMETHING to feed my little four-legged charges. Plus I don’t want to work that hard to put up several cuttings of hay from one field. I enjoy riding around the field on my tractor with mower, rake etc. which gives me a feeling of having accomplished something important. But haying can be a bit stressful for me if I have mechanical breakdowns in the field. My old New Holland 69 hay baler decided it was working too hard and broke down as I was baling a couple days ago. It had sheared a flywheel bolt and the bolt had a burr on it making it impossible for me to pull through the hole to replace it. Fortunately I have a very good farmer neighbor who was able to come over and break it off with a chisel for me. Whew! Bolt was replaced and I was up and running again.

Next day I was out in the field on my Kubota M5700 with grabber picking up small square bales. The field I was working on is next to the gravel road which runs along the front of my farm. I happened to be right next to the road as a semi truck loaded with just harvested grain went by, sending a huge plume of dust my way. Out came the dust musk! Wow! I noticed the combines working in the fields within my view were also kicking up a tremendous amount of dust. Thank goodness for the people that invented modern day combines with cabs on them. I don’t see how those combine operators can see what they are doing otherwise – not to mention breathing in all that dust. Yes, it’s dry, but good harvesting weather.

Sheep and goats love hay. It never ceases to amaze me how my sheep and goats love hay no matter what time of year I may offer it to them.

Yesterday I put a 3x3 round bale over the fence in my goats’ pasture just to see what they would do with it. They had been getting bored lately, seeking new things to investigate and entertain themselves with. Although they have plenty of grass in their pasture it didn’t take them long to discover the round bale and they were all over it. I love this size bale for a mob of animals because no matter what they do to it they can’t get hurt by it. I took this photo yesterday and you can see how much they are enjoying what remains of it.

I’ve discovered another use for the remains of round bale hay – gardening!   This spring I put a few seeds in the remains of the previous year’s round bale mulch. Now I have a bumper crop of squash! (I counted 75 squash so far).

And the sheep-goats don’t bother the leaves of the plant as it is growing, even in the same lot as the sheep-goats are. But they do show an interest in the actual squash as they ripen. After you have picked up all the squash you want (and can give away), you just drive the tractor over the squash to break them open for the sheep and they finish them off. Having fun raising sheep. Lambjoyw@gmail.com