> When I left Yakima (Central WA) there was an abundance of baled hay available.
> (My daughters had three ponies and my wife had goats. I got to lug the bales.)
> Times have changed... or maybe it's a regional thing.
Not as many farmers doing small bales. Just too expensive to handle and
transport. For her house my daughter needed specific sizes, moisture
content and fiber length. Not many farmers want to bother hopping up and
down off the tractor to adjust bale size. She found a farmer near
Eltopia who bales for the straw-house market.
> If you're planting grass find something other than straw to cover the
> germinating seed.
The wheat straw around here is seed free. Much of the small bale market
is for erosion control at construction sites and for those spray seeding
setups. Some fields do still get burned too.
Local island hay on the other hand is very poor quality and full of
queen anne's lace, mustard, etc. Really has to be cooked in a compost
pile to be useful as mulch. Hardly worth the diesel. Nobody bucks small
bales anymore. They use a stacker. When I had livestock I fed E-WA
orchard grass hay or Skagit Valley hay mixed with local island hay.
Local hay alone is slow starvation.
Mike
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