Mrs. Stoney Ridge found the cucumber patch!! Everything Hay Series: How to tell if it's dry enough

guys are a bunch of turkeys in the front yard [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] every [Music] hey folks this is Josh Tony rich farmer welcome to the farm vlog today we mowed hay yesterday and we're gonna go over here and we're gonna look at the grass I wanted to tell you a little bit about the science behind drying the grass for hay so let's go over to the field and we'll show you what hay is ready to be raked and bailed and what hay is not quite ready to be raked and bailed we checked it this morning and we're gonna check it again this evening and you'll see the differences so come along let's go have some fun together all right like those turkeys in the front yard there are seven Tom turkeys that keep coming up like every day in our front yard awesome the guys before we go over to the hay field we're gonna take some veggies up to the neighbors we got a bunch of little bitty tomatoes and we'll just never eat all of them and then we got some cucumbers show the cucumber honey [Music] before we get started guys I'm gonna give you my hey disclaimer I don't know everything there is to know about hey so if you have any comments or any suggestions please leave them down in the video description I don't claim to know everything but if you've never mode hey I can teach you a little bit if you have any comments if you have any suggestions please leave them down in the video description and don't be a condescending jerk alright woo now guys here we are right in the middle of the hay field I wanted to take you over here normally I would not ride over top of this but just for the sake of showing you we ran over the top of the hay just so I can show you what we've got so we're in the center of the field this is the area these are the wind rows that I cut last okay so I used the nine-foot hey vine that we pulled out of the woods to cut this hay this is the last part that we cut and it's where the tallest thickest grass was so what we want to do is come over here and we want to turn this hay up and look at the underside of it and see how good its drying if the moisture content is too high in this hay and we go to bale it the bales can actually ferment and catch on fire so to make a long story short people that bale hay and work with hay a lot have to know what the moisture content of their hay is and you definitely never ever want to store your equipment in the same barn that you store your hay with because a lot of equipment has been lost from fires in a hay barn so let's get down here a little bit closer and we'll talk about the hay and I'll show you what we have folks I can't think of a prettier place on earth than standing in the middle of a hay field and just smelling that that fresh-cut hay smell it's really really awesome so what I'm gonna do is basically take my hand in this big clump right here and reach up underneath and turn it up and see where we're at in the drying process so if you look we're still wet I can feel moisture down in here now it's questioning myself earlier today whether I need to go ahead and turn this hay and basically what I mean by turning it is rake it up into wind rows for me to bail tomorrow and this confirms that I don't need to do that this is not high quality horse hey this is cow hey / goat hay so it's it's not really really high quality hay in some places it is in some places it's not I know where it is and the hey that's going to be goat hey we'll be marked for goat hey and the hey that's cow hey we'll be sold for cow hey pretty cool so I'll show you again we'll go over here and we'll dip into this hey a little bit and we'll show you what the top feels like and looks like and then we'll show you what the bottom looks like alright so this is one of the final wind rows that we did this is in the very center and this is one of the deepest wind rows that we have we've got a lot of hay to get up guys what a beautiful scene so here's what we have and on the very top you can see and you can probably hear it's dry it's mostly dry okay you still got that green look to it but some of its turning brown now you want to maintain all that green that you possibly can then we turn this over a little bit just get it and turn it over and much more green on this side okay and softer you can just feel the softness by tomorrow afternoon this will be ready to bail so I'll go ahead and I'll rake it up at about 11 a.m. and we'll get started bailing probably 1:00 p.m. tomorrow and we'll be sure and take you guys along when we rake and bale this so folks I hope this has helped you out a little bit in understanding a little bit of the science behind mowing hey we've got a little bit of work to do tomorrow so on the next few vlogs we'll be raking up the hay I'll show you how all that stuff works I'll show you how the rake works and I'll also show you how the baler works so a lot of fun stuff come in soon this video will be part of a series on mowing hay that I'm doing this year just so that you can refer back to it so be sure and subscribe to the channel pound that like button for me click the little bell icon it'll notify you when I post a new video and enjoy this beautiful farm with me thanks a lot guys we'll see you next time on Stoney Ridge farm [Music] here it's we've had some ways opposed to me stone Tyrion Oh