It has reached the time of year that I am tired of being hot. You walk out the door first thing and the muggy Kentucky mornings don’t even offer any relief. I routinely take an extra shirt with me to the farm so I at least have a dry one to drive home in. But it is Kentucky and it gets hot every summer, so we live with it and farm on.

Right after the 4th of July we made our second cutting of alfalfa. After the first cutting we put some nitrogen down and with the continued moisture this summer it grew back good. It produced 49 more bales pushing our total in the hoop barn to 368 bales. Typically if we can get 400 bales in the barn we have enough to get through the winter given somewhat “normal” conditions.

At the end of first cutting we were able to put hay into the new Barn Alley Feeder that Dr. Higgins designed and installed this past year. This feeder is built in the center alley of an old tobacco barn. It borrows the same self feeding concept as the Large Bale Feeder but is done so utilizing existing infrastructure. The custom sized wood feeder is hung from barn door track on each side and slides back as the cattle eat the hay. This feeding structure also serves as a hay storage facility as we were able to bale the hay and put it directly from the field into the feeder.
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