Moving Hay

The sun came out and temperatures reached into the high 20s yesterday. In other words, it was a perfect day for moving hay. We store our hay in The Big Barn on the farm. The loft there easily holds a few thousands bales of hay. Periodically, we move 30-40 bales to our small barn where the sheep and horse live. Before Christmas we moved nearly 50 bales of hay there, thinking that would get us through January and the worst of the winter weather. In most years, it would. However, we received heavy snow in February. By this weekend, I was down to the last few bales in the small barn. Moving hay was a two-step process. On Saturday, the husband used the tractor to clear a path between the barns and to clear the snow from in front of the sliding barns doors. While temperatures never reached above freezing this weekend, the sun melted some of the snow around the doors so we could open them. On Sunday, we moved hay, and soon remembered what a hot job it was. By the end, we had shed the winter coats and were wearing sweatshirts and getting sunburned on the snowy, sunny February afternoon.