The Beginning of the End
When I signed up for this gig, (i.e. got married) I knew that Dairy Daze wouldn't last forever; and it probably won't end any time soon, but this summer seems to have hastened the beginning of the end. We had an awful drought back in 2012. We started feeding hay in mid-July. But in the 5 years since then, 2013-17, we had some really wet summers. So much so that we had a bit of a stockpile of hay going on. So this past year Gary decided to use up as much of our old hay as possible. This leaves us this year with minimal hay on hand. This summer has also been a drought. We made it through July on what grass was in the field, and on a couple rainfalls of 2-3 hundredths of an inch of rain. But Aug 9th Gary started toting hay to the dry cows. A few days before he'd sold all of our open heifers in Windyville; about 16 of them. We can't afford to have dead weight around here; so to speak. Then on the 7th, our hay guy from out western MO came ...