Thankful for Hay

I know I shouldn't complain but I just had to mention it. ;-) I typically don't feed using big rounds or small squares. I buy the large squares since that's the easiest thing for me to purchase and for us to man handle. I also prefer the large squares to that I can distribute evenly instead of having the less aggressives get pushed out of the hay ring.

When I bought what I thought were alfalfa/hay bales we unloaded them in front of the mare pasture thinking that I could easily toss the hay and not have to climb any fences. Come to find out that those three round bales are straight alfalfa. So I'm slowly widdling away at those. Unfortunately when we unloaded them, we had to push the first bale (which I'm still working on) and it jammed the alfalfa and snow together so I'm struggling to unravel the darn bale.

I've been picking and pulling at the round bale trying to get off whatever I can. I had enough time and energy today to try and dig away the snow. Ok, so dig is the wrong word... more like swin a pick axe. That's right! It may be a nightly ordeal until I have the snow away from the bale and I can easily unravel the bale (or more likely simply not fight it as much).

The pictures below explain why I know I shouldn't ever complain about my hay.

My hay barn. Two years ago we could drive that tractor in without hitting anything. Since then the building started to sag so we were only able to push the bales from that point on. It's a dumpy building but it works great for storing hay. Now that I've used all the hay in the hay barn I'm using it as a breeze way between the horse pen and the hay shed.

And this is why I shouldn't complain. There's 54 bales on that trailer. There were more bales on another trailer that earlier brought down the tractor that unloaded all those bales. Our ol' Massey can't handle but one bale at a time. I know I'm spoiled!

What took just an hour or so would have taken Mike and myself more than two days to do. I know I'm spoiled so I'll stop comlaining about messing with my three little round bales.