Making hay - when the sun doesn't shine

The forecast was for sun, so Doug started making hay (along with many of our farmer neighbours, some of them started earlier - listening to a different, and better, forecast perhaps) on Thursday last week.

Before

During

After

Tedded for the 1st time on Friday

Then the forecast changed and decided it was going to rain - annoyingly it was right. Not much each day, but forecast for rain on and off for days (weeks?!). Yesterday we were a bit depressed about it, but today we went out and tedded it (turned it over) and it has dried a lot despite damp conditions. So we are now hoping that even most of a day without rain will be enough to get it dry if we keep turning it periodically so it doesn't get all squashed in to clumps which hold the damp.

Tedding for the 2nd time on Sunday - I helped by doing the edges and steeper bits by hand - with a rake. You can sort of see the bit that is not done yet just to Doug's left (below him is done). It was quite flattened by the rain before we did it, but seems mostly dry except some deep buried bits.

I would guess the area he has done is about 3 times what we did by hand last year. The gathering in is likely to be a mighty effort although the tractor can help with that too as the trailer should hold quite a lot packed in tightly.