Farmer Patrick says: Make hay while the sun shines

I’m writing this month’s article in the beautiful sunshine, looking across from the back of the shop towards the North Downs. Everything is green, and the meadows are a beautiful tint of yellow as the buttercups glisten in the sun. These fields will be kept back for haymaking in June.

Let me tell you about haymaking…it’s an age-old traditional process which involves cutting grass while it’s still relatively fresh and the blistering heat of July has not yet dried out all the sugar content. You can’t cut it too early, however, such as in May when it’s lush and green, as this is conserved in a different process, known as silage-making. I’ll go into this more next month, provided I remember.

The steps for haymaking are as follows:

Day 1: Look at the weather forecast. Gauge that you have four to five good days of sun. Attach the mower to the tractor (which you haven’t used since last year) and expect it to work perfectly.

Proceed to the fields in question and go around in circles, cutting the grass from the outside in, then up and down.

After mowing has been completed, congratulate yourself on a good day’s work and tell yourself you deserve a cider.

Day 2: Attach the hay turner to the tractor (again, expecting it to work with no prior service etc.) and after the morning sun has dried the top of the grass, head into the field and turn the hay over, enabling the other side to dry.

Day 3: Today is fairly important, for it’s this day that’s make or break. Turn the hay again, and if you’re lucky, the sun has been out, the clouds have moved to the next county, the hay turner has worked perfectly, and the grass is now crispy and dry and ready for baling.

Now comes the fun part. Obviously, on a freezing cold day last winter you serviced the baler, greasing it up and replacing worn parts, and on no account do you now just drag it out of the shed, hurriedly walk round it with oil can and grease gun in arm, muttering to yourself ‘Why didn’t I do this in January?’ But, being an optimist – which farmers eternally are – you head out to the field in hope.

Once there, where you’ve already pre-rowed up the grass into neat rows, you hold your breath, fire up the baler and wait for the crunch (or not…) of grinding metal. Your luck’s in, and you head off down the row of dried grass.

Balers come in all shapes and sizes: small ones that produce what most people would recognise as a rectangular bale of hay (about 4’ x 2’ x 2’). Or you can have giant rectangular or round bales, which can be moved around with a mechanical loader and trailers and are more suitable for today’s farming systems, but the principle remains the same.

Having baled your hay – without any rain or breakdowns and with the sunshine on your side – you hope for just one more day of good weather to bring the hay in. Head into the field, collect the bales either by hand or machine, take them into the barn, safely stack them and by the end of the day you’re entitled to a couple of cold beers, safe in the knowledge that you have enough hay to feed the animals through winter, as well as a much-needed source of income: selling it to people with horses or other pets.

The following day it can rain as much as it likes as far as you’re concerned. As you drive to the cattle market, looking at your fellow farmer’s field of hay getting wet, you mutter to yourself self-righteously about how they should have serviced their baler…ignoring the home truth that you were just lucky.

So let’s recap. Ingredients for haymaking are as follows:

Field of grass – not too dry, not too wet
Four to five days of good sunshine
A hay turner, tractor, baler and trailer – serviced and ready for action
Lots of enthusiasm
Chilled cider/beer for the evenings
A huge degree of luck

The same rules apply to many farming tasks.

I am a great believer in luck. There’s a good chance a crop will grow. The poorly day-old chick will survive. The meagre crop will be ok, given a few sunny days. The frost that arrived just as the trees were in full blossom won’t have killed all this year’s fruit off. The price of wheat (which is currently on the floor) will pick up. The chickens that aren’t laying well will perk up. As you can tell, I’m a man whose glass is always more than half-full.

I hope this article has given a little insight into a task carried out by thousands of global farmers, all with a common goal: to feed people.

For regular readers of this article, you’ll know I regularly go on about the need for food security and the importance of home-produced food, especially during the periods of change and unrest that we currently face. So, I’m particularly pleased to read all about Rishi Sunak’s Farm-To-Fork Summits recently held at Number 10, and only hope they’ve been taken seriously.

I raise my glass – over half-full of cider – to you all, and wish you a happy month ahead.

And don’t forget: make hay while the sun shines!