How Robert became a NH HAY Farmer - Story          Page 1

Background: Robert became interested in growing plants when he was about 4 years old. Because his home was in the woods he had to grow plants under plant lights. When he was in high school he spent summers in a home by the ocean. With lots of sunshine, he was able to grow many varieties of vegetables for his family and most of his neighborhood in a small circular garden. Robert had a hiatus from gardening for a few years until after he graduated from Dartmouth college with an electrical engineering degree and four years later received his MBA from Dartmouth's Tuck Business School. Several years later Robert was able to purchase a 200 acres farm in southern New Hampshire with an old 1785 farmhouse (that's another story). The farm had some acreage that was leased to a farmer to grow corn for his cows. After the lease was over, Robert began the process of converting these fields to hay fields. Robert's job in high tech keeps him busy Monday-Friday. On weekends, he's enjoys his farm.

Robert is now a serious weekend farmer with hay fields that produce hay for local farmers.

In 2004, Robert began converting one of his fields that was formerly leased to another farmer to grow fodder for cows to a 3.2 acre hay field. In 2005 another 16 acres were converted. Sound simple? Read about what's involved: Robert spent a lot of the winter of 2003-2004 researching how to grow hay. What equipment did he need and where could he buy it? Life is never dull on Robert's 200 acre farm.

Winter & Early Spring 2004
After much thought a list was made and the purchase of used equipment began: tractor to pull the other equipment, seeder, harrow, mower conditioner (to fuff up the hay), rake, 3000 lb bailer and a 13,000 lb 580 Super E Backhoe with a 15 ft backhoe and an extender to 18 ft to remove large rocks (and also help with tearing down and reconstructing an old section of their farmhouse). A hay elevator is still on his wanted list. Each piece of equipment had a story - in the spring their town would not allow the delivery of their large equipment until the frost was out of the roads.

April 2004
Robert drove to a farmhouse near the Canadian border to buy a mower conditioner. The machine was on an old trailer. About one hundred miles into his journey home, the trailer had a flat tire. Now this trailer did not have common tires. And Robert's cell phone was in a dead zone. Robert walked to an isolated farmhouse and knocked on the door. A very nervous woman would not let him in to use the phone, but after much persuasion handed Robert a portable phone to make a call. Luckily the farmer who sold Robert the mower conditioner had a cousin who lived not too far away. The farmer convinced his cousin to help Robert with his flat tire. Because of technical problems, a new tire could not be properly installed on the rim, but the cousin felt that if Robert didn't go over 30 miles per hour, he might make it home. So after losing precious daylight hours, Robert continued on his journey home at 30MPH for 210 miles to finally arrive at his farm.

First week of May 2004:

Friday afternoon a huge 18 wheel semi-trailer arrived with limestone for the hay field. Robert had researched that lots of limestone would increase hay production of the field by more than enough to pay for the limestone over 5 years. The driver of the truck emptied the limestone before Robert realized he was there - and put it not quite where Robert wanted it. Then the HUGE 18 wheeler SEMI-TRAILER LIMESTONE TRUCK GOT STUCK IN THE MUD! It had been raining for a few days. Robert tried to pull out the truck with his 8000 lb tractor, but it got mired in mud too. He then linked his tractor to his 13,000 lb back hoe. After breaking 2 towing straps, he got the truck out of the mud. This all took from 3-7 pm.
Saturday was another busy day. It was the day to move the 17 three weeks old ducklings that had been living in his daughter Stacey's bedroom to the duck barn. Know the saying, like a duck to water... well the baby ducks somehow used their little beaks to take water out of the small slit in their watering tray -- and had water fights with each other. They managed to get themselves completely wet. Some of these ducks are Ancona ducks, a rare species of ducks, the others are Indian runners, like in BABE. All the ducklings arrived by mail when they were one day old. Ducks raised by their mothers get oil from her body which helps to repell water even with young fuzz. But these little ducklings were raised by Stacey, so there were 17 SOAKED DUCKLINGS. An assembly line was set up and using a hairdryer each duckling was fluffed up so that it would not be cold in the duck barn. The dry ducks were then moved to the duck barn which Robert partitioned into 2 parts - one for the 16 ducks that were a couple years old and one for the babies. After the ducks were moved, Robert used his backhoe to load a speader truck that spread the limestone delivered on Friday over the field. After the spreader truck left, Robert used his backhoe to remove rocks from his field (some up to 3-4 feet wide) until it was too dark to see anymore. Then he came in to wash up and have supper.

Vegetable Gardens & Fruit Trees
The first years on the farm Robert grew most of his vegetables and flowers from seed. Every year, he tried some new and unusual vegetables. The new one that Judy liked best in 2004 was tomatillos- tiny pea shaped tomatoes wrapped in a neat paper-like outer covering. Notes about all of the vegetables are kept on a spreadsheet with notes about the seed catalog ordered from, their taste, growth, insect problems, whether to try again or not. The year 2004's two vegetables gardens included: asparagus, dry beans (lots of kinds), broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, corn (ornamental & eating), kohlrabi, lettuce, parsley, parsnip, snow peas, regular peas, sugar snaps, potatoes, pumpkins (large & small),radishes, scallions, spinach, summer squash, winter squash (15 kinds- including hubbard & butternut), tomatoes and turnip. Many fruits are also grown on the farm including apples, blueberries, cherries, peaches, pears, raspberries, strawberries and plums. Robert always marks on his calendar the day the first ripe tomato is picked. Most years, this is around July 4th. In 2004, it was the latest ever because of the unusually cool, rainy summer - August 17th.

4H Fairs - Farmer's children learn about caring for animals and growing crops at 4H. In August 2004, Stacy won 7 blue ribbons for her ducks and miniature chickens! See 4H page.

Steps for making a hay field/pasture from a corn field

see Stacey in hay field September 4th in second farm pictures page.

 
1) Robert tested the PH of the future hay field's soil to determine what amendments it needed - lots of limestone and fertilizer.
2) Robert used his backhoe to clear the hay field of rocks that would interfere with the hay seeding and mowing equipment. Rocks  that are OK for cornfields are not OK for hay fields- the mower conditioner cannot tolerate large rocks. Robert says that this will need to be done every year, because rocks pop up as the field is cultivated.
3) Robert harrowed the field. A harrow is like a plow, but not so deep- it has discs that turn over soil.
4) As told in the first week in May story, limestone and fertilizer were spread over the field. An 18 wheeler truck delivered the limestone and a 10 wheeler truck spread the limestone over the hay field. Robert used his backhoe to load the 10 wheeler truck.
5) Robert harrowed the field again to work the limestone and fertilizer into the soil.
6) Robert used his cultipactor pulled behind his tractor to seed the hay field with Ladino clover (taller that regular clover) and timothy grass. In the better drained soil he also planted orchard grass. The cultipactor has two rollers- the first metal roller makes indentations for the seeds with the bumps on it and the second roller packs the seeds again.
7) This is the part that's unpredictable- Robert waited for sun and rain to make the clover and grass grow.

8) Mowing - the last week in July, the hay field was ready for its first mowing. Robert used his mower conditioner pulled behind his tractor to mow down the grass leaving long columns of hay in the field. For one glorious hour he had a great time riding his tractor to cut his hay for the first time. He cut the part of the field he had carefully prepared. Then he decided haying was so much fun he would mow some grass outside of the prepared area. Right away the power takeoff from the tractor to the baler was disconnected by bumping a stone and Robert had to spend the next few hours repairing the damage. The first mowing was mostly pigweed which is useless for feed- but he was learning how to use his equipment.

Mowing - the last week in August, the field was ready for its second mowing. Again, Robert used his mower conditioner pulled behind his tractor to mow down the clover and grass - leaving long columns of mowed hay in the field.

9) Next the hay should be fluffed up using a tedder pulled behind the tractor. BUT ROBERT DOESN'T HAVE A TEDDER! He tried to buy a second-hand one, but the tedder he was considering was found to be defective and he never found another one. HE REALLY NEEDS A TEDDER for next year. The tedder fluffs up the hay and helps it dry better and faster. With no tedder, some of the hay got moldy so it's no good for feed. But the hay needed to be removed from the field. Robert proceeded as if the hay were good.
10) He used his tractor to pull his ground driven side delivery rake around the field to rake the hay in neat rows.
11) The fun part- baling the hay. Robert hooked up his baler/kicker to his tractor. Like magic, 2 bales of hay with string    automatically wound around them were thrown into the air some 30 feet behind the tractor - then all the fun stopped. Robert thought maybe a pin had sheared off. He called a more experienced farmer neighbor for advice. His neighbor noticed a couple of missed knots and sections of twisted twine around the two hay bales. He told Robert that could be caused by using twine that became damp from being on the baler all summer. Fortunately, Robert had previously purchased 9,000 feet of new twine. Also, luckily, it wasn't a broken pin that stopped the baler, it was the dogs- not animal dogs! Dogs is a device that protects a machine from killing itself. It took an hour or so to work the pin out of the dogs and work oil in. Then the next day, Robert had a wonderful time throwing 30 bales of hay high into the air and onto his field without incident!
12) Storing the hay. If Robert had a wagon to attach to his baler, then the hay would be all ready to take to storage. Next year, Robert hopes to find a wagon. Since he has no wagon, he had to manually lift all the hay bales into his truck and drive to a storage area. He piled up the pales and put a tarp over them. Since he had no tedder and the hay has some mold in it, the bales will used only to mulch their vegetable gardens next year - not to feed the horse Stacey hopes to get.

Robert hoped to harvest another crop of hay, but cool, rainy weather foiled his plans.
With cooler weather and the sun lower, hay takes longer to dry.

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