On the Farm: Corn and Hay
May Crops
May is one of the busiest times of the year for most people. Graduation season is in full swing with students graduating from preschool, elementary, high school, and colleges. Parents are going crazy trying to make sure the end of the year banquets, class parties, and final assignments are all accomplished before school ends. Students are stressing and studying as they prepare for final exams and SOLs. By the end of May, student, teachers, and parents are completely exhausted and relieved to start summer vacation. For us at the farm, May is just the starting point of harvest season.
“April Showers bring May Flowers”, has been a saying we have all heard at least once in our life. It’s a fact that April rains tend to make the Earth green and colorful during the month of May, but what else do April showers bring? For farmers, April showers bring on one of the craziest, busiest, and most intense times of the year: Hay and Planting season.
Hay is a general term for different types of grasses (timothy, blue grass, fescue, etc.) and legumes (nitrogen plants like alfalfa and clover). Cows absolutely love eating hay. It helps keep their stomachs from becoming upset and provides them with lots of protein and essential nutrients to keep them healthy, satisfied and producing milk. Farmers spend a lot of time, money and labor to make sure the hay is cured and dried correctly to prevent it from molding. On the farm, we have two methods to storing and curing hay. We will dry roll (allow the hay to completely dry out before stacking it in the barn) or we will tube the hay. Tubing involves placing the haybales on a machine that will carefully wrap each bale into a long tube. The wrap allows for the hay to ferment and lock in nutrients and avoid molding. Cows love the wrapped hay because the natural sugars are like candy to them.
Planting season is the second most stressful and intense time of the year for us. To start planting, we first take soil samples of the fields and find out what kind of fertilizer we may need for the corn to grow and produce a high yield. We work with Rockingham Coop to develop a fertilizer to provide the correct amount and type of fertilizer for the soil. Next, we service the corn planter to make sure it is clean, free of debris, and to make sure all parts are working. Then, we start planting the corn. These are some long days. We will work from 4;30 in the morning until 8:30 or 9 at night. We must get the corn in the ground all at once, so we can get it to all finish growing at the same time. That way, we can ensure the corn will have nutrients for our cows.
It’s a crazy time of year, but it sure is exciting to see our corn “Pop up in Rows!
–Story and photo Courtney Henderson, special to the Botetourt Bee