Barn drama at our place

We've been taken advantage of by our 2nd hay farmer (the first being the 2nd's cousin).

Did I tell you this already -  that we switched from pompous Carsten to his cousin Daniel to mow our pasture and in return give us a portion of hay back.

Daniel crossed the line for me this month. He dragged our pasture Sunday and said his cousin C would be coming to fertilize "sometime during the week", but he never said when, and when C arrived to fertilize the very next morning and found our gate locked, he became angry, apparently, and Daniel said he would not make hay on our pasture, he's done. (BTW, we were both home, and C knows our padlock, and our telephone numbers.)

So, good riddance, our umpteenth slacker.

Then, the jerk called J on Monday and said he bought a new tool that can plant grass seed underground so birds cannot steal the seeds. He offered to come use his new toy on our pasture, for a price.

I admit, I fruck out. I said, "No way, unless he apologizes to us for quitting on us when C found a locked gate when we were not told when he'd arrive. No way does he get to make money from us unless he goes back to our original deal - he makes hay here, he gets 2/3 of it for free, we get 1/3."

J said he'd think about it, but eventually he agreed with me, and told Daniel, "We don't require your services." In addition, J told him off. He used Daniel's own arguments against him. J said, "You said our field is not worth harvesting because it has not been fertilized - it needs kalk. Now you want to plant more grass to depend on even less kalk. This is not logical."

I LOVE that my man used the jerk's own science against him.

So J asked Herr Fischer to mow our pasture. Fischer has so far been cool to us, and sold us lovely hay. He's not close, but J wanted to ask if he'd consider us.

They walked to the pasture and tried to open our gate.  J said as he unlocked it the entire gate fell down on his foot. HOLY CRAP WHAT?

Apparently Carsten tried to "break and enter" our pasture! No freaking way. That is irresponsible, we have animals here, they cannot miss that. (If our gate is locked it means we are not expecting visitors and our animals might be out.)

I begged J that we have nothing more to do with Daniel & Carsten, unless we get an apology for his behavior: Leaving J an SMS (not calling?) saying, "Your gate was locked, I won't be mowing your pasture this year." Locked, but C has the code to open it, knows where we live, and he has our phone numbers. WTH.

The good news is that Fischer will consider our pasture, and he had a lot of good things to say. He said our pasture has much more grass varieties than he's used to, and much less moles. I don't know how anyone can identify grass types that are only 6 cm in height.

He also said it's fine if we continue to build grazing strips around the edges, because he says he cannot come to the edges anyway.  That's great news cuz our animals are dying for more pasture and working through way too much hay for this time of year. I was just trying to attrack a hay farmer to us, so I left my animals on grazing strips.

Now we have a respite. Fischer will charge us by the hour for the work he does harvesting, and all the hay belongs to us. And the purchase of 72 includes a shed next to our pasture which would be great for storing hay in.

Today is April 23. Yesterday we were amazed to see farmers mowing fields - in APRIL! They don't want to repeat last year, where a drought made it impossible to make more than a first cutting. We all suffered last year. It was wonderful to hear the field next to ours get harvested today, good work boys!

Our animals are back on the strips and eating hay and mash again, because now we need to grow our own hay in earnest.

I find it interesting that we have our own sort of "barn drama" simply because of the people we have to deal with who mow our hay and work our ponds (another story for another day).

Easter break is not quite over and we have a ton of stuff to accomplish around here before J goes back to work. Today my man spent 3 hours putting our greenhouse back together like a puzzle, after the storm Eberhart took lots of it down. Greenhouses and ponds. Two things I'd never choose to have on my property if I had a choice. I've got enough to do around here.

As a Seattle girl, I love being in the middle of they hay-making process. I never really saw that growing up in Puget Sound. Now I walk out my door and all around me people are harvesting what grows naturally, grass. With no need for irrigation. It's wonderful and practical - hay never travels in Germany. You will never see a semi with hay on it. As homesick as I can be, I enjoy watching horse food grow and be processed in every direction I look outside my house door.

Go agriculture Nordrhein Westfalen!  Let's have a second or may I dream, a third? this year!