Audio
Curing Hay
Transcript
Today’s process is a combination called a [indistinguishable] disk bind or maybe a new idea had there [mumbling] cut conditioner. What you do is you cut it and crush it to some extent to open up the stems to allow it to cure better, to be able to dry. And you don’t really dry hay, you cure. There’s a difference. And we’ll come in with a tedder, and we’ll ted the hay up to fluff it, to help the air and sun get through. Mother Nature was drying, or curing hay—I want to use the word “curing”—is amazing that this stuff is so wet, so thick when you cut it, and yet it cures up and dries the moisture out of it so quick. It’s unbelievable. And then we come by. We have to rake it into what’s called a “windrow” and generally I don’t like to windrow unless I don’t got a bailer, ‘cause it’s—when—if you don’t have to—if you have to let it go overnight ‘cause you didn’t get it bailed up, now you got moisture underneath so you gotta flip it or fluff it or somethin’, so the least you have to handle that hay, the better off you are.
Description
Ernest Ogrinc, a Valley View farmer, describes the modern process of curing hay.
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