A vintage year for haymaking

All over Craven the mowers are out and farmers are busy making hay.

Like silage, the hay comes from the first cut, but unlike silage, which is fed to cattle, hay is fed to horses and ponies, and even household pets like rabbits and guinea pigs.

Also, unlike silage which is made from young, succulent grass around late May, hay comes from mature grass in early July.

Dairy farmers want good, protein rich, fattening feed for their cattle, whereas horses and ponies need fibre rich diets, a fattening diet could lead to obesity and potentially life threatening diseases, such as laminitis.

This year, farmers have reason to be cautiously optimistic and they are making the most of the heatwave.

It may not last, but it’s already a huge improvement on the last few sodden summers – and like a good wine 2013 could very well be a vintage year for hay.

No one is happier with the weather than David Coates, who in addition to running Craven Country Ride at Pot Haw Farm, Coniston Cold, also runs Cravenbale Haylage.

Since 2002, David has been producing forage for horses and ponies.

It includes haylage, a sort of fermented hay that comes in different forms for competition or leisure horses, and which can be baled soon after being cut unlike normal hay which needs to mature in the sun for four or five days.

Haylage, a relatively new type of forage, has developed as a result of poor summers and is less time consuming.

Twenty years ago, there was no Plan B if wet weather hit the production of hay. It would simply sweat and go mouldy.

And the weather over the last few years has been particularly disastrous for hay making.

However, the haylage system means grass can be cut and quickly wrapped in plastic to preserve it.

A typical year will see more than 80 per cent of the grass made into haylage, and the rest into hay, but one gets the impression it is the traditional meadow hay that David would rather be making.

“When the weather is like this, there is really nothing I’d rather be doing or anywhere I’d rather be,” he said.

The current heatwave is ideal for traditional hay, because after it is cut, arranged into neat lines ready to be baled and then just left for three or four days to dry.

It can also be cut at the right maturity.

At David’s Pot Haw Farm, he has just under 600 acres, some of it is pasture for his cattle and sheep – the very nature of parts of the drumlin hills would make it impossible for modern machinery to cut.

Then there are the meadows. The meadows have yielded hay for generations and at one time would have been harvested by hand.

Today’s harvesting does, of course, make use of modern technology, a machine now knots the baling twine and pumps out bales rather like a sausage machine.

But for all the modern technology, it is the sun and the grass itself that makes the hay what it is.

After it is cut, the grass is also fluffed up with a tedder to helping the drying. It is then raked into lines with a windrow machine before being baled, with a baler.

David’s fields have names and with each delivery to customers he includes a note of which field it has come from.

There is the Top Well Field, Fred’s Field, and perhaps the best meadow hay harvest comes from the Wedding Field.

The hay there is made up of ryegrass, Timothy, Cockshot and other meadow grasses – and there is just a hint of buttercup. It is a beautiful golden colour and the smells is just pure summer.

“People come back to me and ask for hay from the same field because each one has its own character,” said David.

Around 80 to 100 bales of hay are generated from each acre and following the first and only cut, the meadow fields are then turned over for grazing.

A freshly cut field also makes splendid going for the horses and ponies using the Craven Country Ride.