The sun of summer blends with rich soils and is distilled into fragrant hay - cut, raked, baled, rolled, loaded onto wagons (or not) and then into barns and storage for feeding livestock and bedding in the coming New England winter.
There is an art and a science to livestock feed, especially hay.
Small bales. Bound with poly twine. Timothy/alfalfa mix, horse quality, round rolls for cattle; bound with sisal twine or square bales of timothy/clover mix - someone has to watch the New England weather (wait a moment and it changes), and do the labor to get fields cut, dried and under wraps.
A traditional crop now has an online forum where buyers and sellers can meet:
AgWorld's Haymarket. States included in the northeast region are Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio.
Top Quality Hay Processors (TQHP) is headquartered in upstate New York. For more information about the business, see www.tqhp.com or call (607) 869-3477; e-mail, sales@tqhp.
Were you there? A complete list of the recent Running Brook Farms Tractor Pull results are online at Connecticut Bragging Rights. Looks like the oldest tractor in the pulls was the 1937 John Deere A (Vin Germini, Chester). Many more photos will be showcased here this week.
