No Greater Wealth Than Hay

September 25, 2022
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

The Western hay supply crisis—surely you’ve heard of that—is over with at Owl Feather Farm. Shipping issues? Nah. Inflationary meltdown? War? Not here. A miracle all around, since these problems have been turning ‘civilization’ into a garbage fire the past two years.
We’ve been making our own hay, raking it by hand and hauling it to the barn all summer. Managed to feed Cereus and Cocoa (called "hobby animals" by industrial ag interests) that way since mid-June. The alternative, paying industrial hay farmers who burn barrels of oil to truck it to our island from Eastern Washington, is expensive, unsustainable and stupid. And raking hay is excellent exercise for middle age white guys attempting to keep their youthful figures.
100 bales of hay in pasture

That's 100 bales in the Meadow

These hay supply issues spurred some friends to order small-farm equipment from Italy—4-foot sickle, combination rake/tedder, and baler. This is not made in America because, as it says in the US Constitution, "if it ain't big it's communist crap," so they waited three months for it to get here from Europe. Once it arrived two weeks ago, they decided to have the test run here.
This year's very wet spring grew exceptional hay. Four feet tall in some spots. Late summer’s weather has been mild and dry, and the total was 400 bales. We have 100 in our barn, stacked 10 feet high by Nicole. The rest goes to our friends’ horse farm, where it will save them many thousands in hay-import costs.
piles of hay in barn

A Full Room of Hay!

Humans have been making hay for thousands of years.
Not so long ago, a barn full of hay was huge wealth—you
could feed your horses, oxen and cattle through the winter,
and that was the difference between prosperity and
destitution, if not starvation. We feel just the same now, our
two households, with hay stacked high under cover in a life-
or-death tradition dating back many centuries. Real wealth
is a very simple thing.

—Eric Lucas

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