Why Round Bales?

We baled our hay at the start of this week - our big farming endeavour every year!

Bales in the sunshine

 We round bale ours and the other day someone asked me why. We could make much more money from them if we baled it into small square bales and sold them through the winter. Our main issue with that, other than very few contractors will bale them like that anymore, is we have no storage for them. 

Bales in the rain

One day we will build a barn to store our bales in (if we can get planning), but in the meantime we will keep having round bales. These can spend a bit of time in the rain without getting too damaged and they are easily transported away from our little smallholding - sold off the field. It's a good job too with all the rain we've been having over the last couple of days!

Moving Bales

The bales have gone today. Dad found someone who wanted to buy them so picked them up this afternoon. As well as this he came with a trailer full of bits and bobs for a rather large project we're starting next weekend (but more on that later in the week).

An enjoyable job



A good, secure load



Off they go!



A flat tyre just to make things interesting!



Getting a wheel off a tractor with no jack - just a few tricks my dad taught me!

Things were going so well until we had a flat tyre on the little loader tractor. The only advantage with this was dad showed me a trick on how to take a tyre off a tractor without using a jack (as I didn't have one).
We did have to continue loading the trailer with the flat tyre, but as the tyre is completely perished where it burst it will need to be scrapped anyway so no great loss, just bad timing!