I know how it happens in America. The semi pulls up to your barn, attaches the hay lifting device (no idea what that thing is called), and the bales get slowly, mechanically pulled up into your loft.Here in the land of narrow twisty streets, a tractor arrives at your barn, delivered by the farmer who grew the hay himself. I arrived a little late to help. His son was up in the loft already, catching the hay and stacking it. This is how it happens.
The hay farmer stabs his long-handled pitchfork into a bale and hefts it up over his head, twisting and aiming perfectly so it lands in the loft, where his son grabs it. I watched in amazement as he did this 180 times in a row, with 180 bales of hay. He stopped only to answer my questions, such as, "So, what kind of hay is this?" and that was dumb, I don't know German agricultural nomenclature, duh. I didn't understand the answer at all. *giggle*
I gathered that it's a mix of three types of grass. Good. It was lovely and I was soon in the rhythm of grabbing bales off the ground and placing them three-high, so the farmer didn't have to stoop low to stab a bale. It went on and on.
I had to express myself at the end. I said, "You are unbelievably strong." My arms and shoulders were hurting from watching.
I wonder what hay costs in America? Cuz I tried to tell him, "Many people cannot afford horses anymore in America, because they cannot afford hay." I turned around and touched his green tractor and said, "It's the price of diesel. It's hurting horse owners and horses are going hungry too." He looked at me and grinned. I noticed some important teeth were missing. He said, "The price of diesel in America is not, actually, high." I said, "OH! OH yes, you're right. My mistake.": )
(In case you're curious, diesel in Germany is 1.20 Euros. Per liter.)
The barn owner confided in me that she paid 480 Euros for the 2 tons of hay - 180 bales. The bales are smaller here (hey, everything's smaller here!), but I am so curious how that compares to hay prices in America. When I used to buy hay (in the 90's) it was about $10 per 80 lb. bale.
I feel pretty happy about the price of hay here. Relieved that we won't go broke in winter, and that there's good grass hay to be had, and lovingly put up in your loft by the very farmer who grows it.
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9 comments:
so many similarites,
2.4 euro for a small bale
farmer has missing teeth
stacked by hand
grown on the farm
I can't believe how expensive it in in america...wow.
That is very interesting. I can't imagine hefting bales with a pitchfork!
We had to haul bales into the barn ourselves because the truck couldn't pull up to the barn, and no mechanized system either. I bought 300 at one time. What a day of work that was! I paid 9.50 a bale this past summer. i dread the price next summer.
loved this story! thanks for bringing a bit of life in Germany to this San Francisco girl on the holiday weekend!
LOL That word you are looking for Lytha is "elevator" ;)
I put up a lot of hay in times past, as we grew our own in Tundra Country. And I hated every single one of those ~3000 bales, that averaged a weight of 65#. But my horses liked it, and our beef sure tasted lovely as well!
A 40 pound bale here in the Southland runs about $6.50 per bale. Diesel is still high, around the $2.50 per gallon mark here. Not sure about the rest of the country. Oh- and that hay is for locally grown grass hay. From what I gather though, on the East Coast at least, $6 to $7 per 40# bale of first cutting grass hay is the average.
Love your Germany stories!! This has got to be one of my favorite places to visit!!
I LOVE this blog...nice to see anohter country through your eyes! We buy our hay here in the N. Idaho by the ton. We get our hay from the hay farmer up the street whom brings it up for us in the hay slip right out of the field and drops it in front of the barn. His hay isn't the greatest, but the landlord buys it from him because he is our neighbor. The bales average about 70lbs each so 25 bales per ton, (with every other ton having 26 bales to offset the weight of a half bale per ton.)He charged us $200 per ton (up $50 per ton from last year) which in our area is a little high for the quality of the hay, but again the landlord calls this keeping good neighbor relations... If you shop it, you can get hay out of the field here for about $135 or so, delivery runs you anywhere from free (for large orders) to $2.00 per loaded mile.
My mom lives 150 miles South of me and got her hay for $100 a ton out of the field and hualed herself...really nice grass hay, but her hay was up $25 from the previous year due to fertilizer prices.
The short of this long story is we bought 30 tons of grass hay this year to feed 10 horses and mules for a whopping $6000. Since then the landlord has added another horse, so I expect we will have to pick up a few ton until our grass comes on strong to the tune of $250 per ton out of the barn if not more.
Ugh, bad math...28 per ton with every other ton having 29 bales! Oooops!
Interesting how things are done in Germany. I'm looking forward to reading more about your adventures there.
Those bales sound about the same weight as ours. Right about 50 pounds. While we don’t lift with pitchforks, I am sure it could be done if necessary. A hay elevator sure would be a lot easier, but it takes fuel to run the generator that runs it. :)
We are lucky here in the states. :)
I'm way late, but in 2009 in Michigan, hay is like $4.00 - $5.00 and even $6.00+ a bale. Expensive - but I think it's way worse in other areas. We just have lotsa' hay fields.
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