Hay

[cowman]

Talked to a guy out west who said some small square bales sold for $11 at Rimbey last week. Alphalfa/orchard grass. This years hay. Sold to some horse people. Gotta keep those old plugs fat and sassy and damned the expense!
My neighbour has about 5000 sq. bales of hay all stacked and tarped. Usually has about 15000. He said the phone is ringing off the hook but he is playing hard to get. Says no sense in selling too early as the price has only one way to go...up! Figures $10 sounds about right! Certified check only, as the horse crowd is notorious for not paying.
Now this hay is off about 150 acres. He never put any fertilizer on it this spring as it was so dry. $50,000 for 150 acres! Works out to $333/acre...not too bad for a drought year! Now if it would rain and he got a second cut...

[dalek]

Saw on tv tonight some farmers around Ottawa were gathering up hay to send west. It's a bit premature for most farmers around here to think of that yet, with the drought last year and big parts of Ontario shaping up as dry or drier as last year we might not have feed ourselves. Right now we have enough forage to get us through the year as long as we get a decent corn silage crop but if it doesn't rain hard soon we won't have enough and we have more of a cushion for acres than most.

[cowman]

There is a field of corn quite near me that is really doing well. Just seems to keep growing no matter how dry it is. It was planted on summerfallow and is really clean. You can hardly find a weed. I always thought corn needed a lot of moisture but this crop sure is doing well.

[cakadu]

Sometimes waiting for the big prices can backfire. There are only so many horse people to go around and if everyone waits for the big dollars to come in from horse people, they may be waiting a long time. Asking and getting are 2 different things.

In some ways I can see people wanting to make a buck when they have something that is in demand and I certainly have nothing against people making money. It just seems a shame that there is "gouging" going on when things are pretty tough in some areas. Call me naive or too soft-hearted, whatever you like, but I believe in the old what goes around comes around.

Been hearing stories about that big fire down south a few years ago and people from central/northern Alberta shipped hay down to them because of the dire conditions down there. A couple kept track of where their hay went and this year phoned down there to the people the hay went to and wanted to know if they would reciprocate and the answer was "no." How quickly we forget and how quick we are to take advantage of an already devastating situation for some. It isn't the horse people that make agriculture go in this province.