JHP Homestead’s Journal

[Mike CHS]

We put all of our hay on pallets last year and covered with tarps. Where we used expensive tarps the hay was fine but where we used the fairly cheap blue tarps the hay was all moldy.

This year we worked it out where we pay in advance for the hay we want for this coming winter and they will store it till we come to pick it up.

 

[AmberLops]

Yay! Glad you got your hay
That's such a beautiful picture too!

 

[JHP Homestead]

We had some of our hay tarped last year and some not, but we didn’t know the “right way” to stack un-tarped round bales so I think we accidentally accelerated the mold. A couple of the bales we fed this spring were almost half rotten. I’m hoping not to waste money in that fashion this year.

Being able to store it inside would be nice. Our supplier/neighbor stores their unsold hay inside but doesn’t have enough storage or willingness to store our hay for us. Maybe someday we’ll be able to add on to our pole barn for indoor storage.

 

[Baymule]

What type roof does your pole barn have? Is it a metal roof, new or old? R panel or corrugated? Near us is a metal business, they sell roll ends for a dollar a foot. It is any color, any pattern, but you can buy what best matches what you already have. Maybe there is a metal business near you? It would be worth contacting them to ask about seconds or end pieces. I have a pile of used corrugated roof tin. I have used a lot of it on things like chicken coops, the Pig Palace and other projects. I just plug the holes with roofing tar that comes in a tube. I am somewhat of a scrounger. When the electric company went through here replacing poles, we got 3 of them and a neighbor has given us another one, they are about 40 feet.

 

[Baymule]

A neighbor built a front porch and got roll end prices for the roof. We went over to help him put it on. It wasn’t braced real good to support neighbors weight, so I went up and put on the radiant heat barrier and the tar paper, just in time before it rained. Then neighbor braced the roof better and we both put the metal on, my husband leaned it against the roof for us. Those end pieces saved a lot of money, they were 12’ long.

 

[JHP Homestead]

@Baymule Our pole barn roof is the R panel style. We usually attend an Amish consignment farm auction around here a couple times a year. We’ve managed to snag quite a few pieces of metal roofing for real cheap from there, but we keep finding uses for it so we don’t have enough of a stash for building a leanto off our pole barn for hay yet.

I’m also not sure it’s the best solution. Our pole barn is 32x48, so if we added 8’ off one side, we’d have storage for ~24 bales. We bought 50 bales this year, which should be about 10 more than we need, but I don’t ever see us buying 24 or fewer, unless we trim our large livestock numbers way down.

It might be that we just always end up tarping them outdoors. We never had indoor hay storage when I was a kid and I don’t think we even tarped our hay. DH and I are just trying to cut down on how much we have to buy, since hay is twice the price now as it was when I was a kid.

 

[JHP Homestead]

As far as work on the homestead goes, we’ve been working on building a 2 acre pasture for our horse, which I’ll detail one of these days.

It’s also black and red raspberry season. I haven’t been out picking a lot though. Mostly just letting DS eat them fresh by the handful.

There’s quite a few red ones out there, so I think I might pick a bowl tonight and make some red raspberry jam. We still have a lot of black raspberry jam from last year, but don’t have any red.

 

[Baymule]

@Baymule

I’m also not sure it’s the best solution. Our pole barn is 32x48, so if we added 8’ off one side, we’d have storage for ~24 bales. We bought 50 bales this year, which should be about 10 more than we need, but I don’t ever see us buying 24 or fewer, unless we trim our large livestock numbers way down.

ummm….. go out farther than 8' would be my suggestion. LOL

since hay is twice the price now as it was when I was a kid.

You must not be very old.....I'd be delighted, jumping for joy, whooping, screaming and hollering if things were ONLY twice the price.

 

[Bruce]

Or if income kept up with the price increases over all those years!

 

[JHP Homestead]

Haha! I’m only 29, so I guess I don’t have as much room to complain about the price increase of items as some do