Best Laid Plans

Well, the weekend didn't go as planned. Mother Nature decided to throw 2020 at us to mess up our plans of getting the hay home. I'm already stressed about how to pay for it and now we have to figure out how to get it all home.

Friday evening the wind picked up and what little snow we had gotten on Thursday started drifting on one of the roads (we'd gone to Madison where the hay was and noticed the snow drifts). One of the other roads was a sheet of ice. We'd hoped by Saturday that the temps would warm and it wouldn't be a big deal but in the morning, it was still cold and the roads were still slick.

So instead of hauling hay with the big trailer that holds 11, we used our car trailer that holds 3. We made one trip home with three bales so we'd have at least something. After we unloaded, we headed right back to Madison to pick up another load. Unfortunately by this time, the ground had warmed up and the roads were getting cleaner (still not completely clear) and where they hay was turned into a muddy mess. We got the truck and trailer stuck without even having the bales loaded. Luckily we were able to get a push out after getting loaded up but it also meant that using the big trailer was a no go.

My thinking with using the smaller trailer is:

The big flatbed trailer we can borrow holds 11 bales. If we order 55 bales, that should get us through the winter. We had leftovers from last year which was a good thing, but if something happens and we say yes to a senior horse in desperate need, we'll need to make sure we have hay on hand. So 55 it is because that makes five trips with the trailer.  But because our time is so painfully limited, I came up with the idea that if we took a load of hay back to Borderlands (11 bales), then we could put another three bales on the car trailer. If we did that four times, we'd have the fifth load of hay home without having to figure out a time to get it home. There's an hour + round trip just in driving and another hour or so to unload the hay. So typically we only get two loads home in one day. So if we had a full weekend (which we did this past weekend), we could get all the hay home.

Unless Mother Nature decides to throw us for a loop.

We thought we could at least haul two loads home on Sunday but after looking at the weather forecast, we knew we'd only be able to squeeze one in. Woke up Sunday morning to roaring wind. We aren't going to borrow someone else's trailer and haul it home with hay when we don't typically haul hay. If it was our trailer, we might have thought differently but because it wasn't ours, we weren't going to take any chances. So instead we hauled one load of hay home on the car trailer. It'll get us through until Thanksgiving.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can haul the hay home over Thanksgiving. We've made three trips with the car trailer so we'll only need to make trips with the big trailer. We'll be up to Madison sometime over the next two weeks to get the final load of hay on the small trailer.

The hay that was supposed to be ours is also trapped in a different field thanks to the unseasonably early snowfall. I was a little disappointed but the hay we are using is just as good. It technically could be certified hay if my hay guy wanted to jump through the hoops to make it happen.

So we'll try over Thanksgiving to see how it goes. Of course this coming weekend was supposed to be nice but we are out of town for a Borderlands trip. I'll have to tell you more about that later. But it's a somewhat surprise.

And because we work during the week, we can't haul day or even unload it if they bring it down. It's always dark thirty by the time we get done working and head out to chores when it's this time of year. Makes for some stress. Luckily we only have about two months of pitch black chores but it sure makes me appreciate doing chores in the daylight!