DIY Hay Baler

[Nomad64]

Not really bushcraft but I’ve been having a go at scything recently and wanted to make some hay - I figured that if nothing else, doing something that required a few days of sunny dry weather would bring the current drought to an end!

My local scything guru helps run Caring for God's Acre a non religious group which helps maintain churchyards as Wildlife havens using traditional tools. Through them I got some plans for a hand baler apparently used in the US to bale “pine straw” - pine needles used as garden mulch.

http://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/images/uploads/fact_sheets/Hand Hay Baler Plans.pdf

There are a few gaps in the plans but after a bit of trial and error and a fair bit of 4x2 and 3x2, I now have a functioning baler. A bit of fettling still required but quite pleased with the first bale - about 2/3rds the size of a conventional small bale,



As a first effort, I was a bit wary of putting too much pressure on the lever and although the bale is pretty solid, it should be possible to compress a fair bit more hay into future bales and with a bit more care loading the hay, it should be possible to make pretty decent (if not quite machine standard) bales reasonably quickly.

Maybe not strictly traditional but a lot easier to store and manage than loose hay and every other part of the process, is done using traditional tools; scythe, pitch fork and hay rake.

 

[Janne]

Excellent hay, and excellent result!
Your rabbits will love it, and the meat will be extra tasty!

 

[crosslandkelly]

Good idea, looks very usable.

 

[Muddypaws]

That's pretty ingenious, and well executed by the looks of it. Good job!

 

[Macaroon]

Excellent hay, and excellent result!
Your rabbits will love it, and the meat will be extra tasty!

Do rabbits eat hay? I've never heard of a wild one doing so but I don't know about domesticated ones.

 

[Janne]

Oh yes, domesticated ones eat hay.
The wild rabbits and hares eat the grass that has dried after summer/autumn, during winters.
If the snow is to thick for them to dig/scratch through it, they eat the tips and buds of trees.
Carrots? No, not naturally in the wild.
Baby birds? Yes.


The domesticated ones eat most vegetables served to them. Stress a new rabbit mother and she can turn on her newborn offspring.
Wild boar do that. And domesticated pigs too!

Note for townies: Hay is dried grass. Food. Straw is bedding, the stalks of grain.
Straw can though be fine chopped and mixed in with hay or cereal animal food.

The apparatus to fine chop straw as a strong family connection to me.

 

[Nomad64]

FWIW, there are no domesticated rabbits and very few wild ones in my life!

 

[Robson Valley]

Could be quite a market for that hay baler in Canada, after October 17, 2018.
That's National Legal Dope Day here.

I don't think a whiff of smoke will make it to the UK.
I can see kids after school with a bale on their bikes, pedaling along to sell door-to-door.
= =
We have Pika in the mountains. They are little, short-eared rabbit sort of critters.
They live in great rock-slide colonies. Bold and really easy to sit and watch them work.
They harvest and dry grass to make winter haystacks under the snow for winter food.
I recall that there are 7 colonies in Jasper National Park.

 

[Janne]

I remember the difficulty storing hay. This baler would have helped me enormously!

You should put an ad in the Rabbit hobbyists magazine ( if such exists in UK) and sell!

Yes, Canada will be very relaxed soon. I guess the GDP will drop considerably.

 

[Robson Valley]

Maybe feed the dope to the meat rabbits?
Take a trip and never leave the table?
Will tomorrow's left overs be even better?

The first dope shop will open in British Columbia in the city of Kamloops.
150 different varieties of "hay," we are told.

The 600 lb round bales are rolling out of the binders this week here.
Warm and dry after cold and wet.
Even a few local businesses almost closed for the week to get it done.

 

[slowworm]

FWIW, there are no domesticated rabbits and very few wild ones in my life!

What do you plan to use the hay for?

Thanks for the idea and details, I have a couple of acres of wild flower meadow and scythe some bits and had thought of making hay. Storage would be a bit of a problem and I hadn't even thought of making bales in such a way so the idea could be very useful.

 

[Janne]

Nomad64, maybe not today, but now when you have such a wonderful hay press you can get some!

Excellent eating, rabbits!

Rabbit schnitzel. Rowanberry jelly, steamed potatoes.

Food for Gods!

 

[Robson Valley]

Good baled hay for pet food and/or bedding/nesting ought to be sold through pet shops.
Make little bales, one cubic foot, something easy to pick up, carry in the car boot.

Hay bales here just get covered in some way to keep off the rain and snow.
Some people have power wrappers for the 600lb bales. Look like 200m white caterpillars
along the edges of fields. Maybe some fermentation expected? I don't know.

 

[Janne]

Yes, some of those white plastic wrapping systems produce Silage.
cows love it. Specially if the grass is mixed with legumes.
Think Sauerkraut.
The only negative is the cows get a bit looser stool. I know from personal experience.
Taught me not to stand behind a cow.

 

[Nomad64]

What do you plan to use the hay for?

Thanks for the idea and details, I have a couple of acres of wild flower meadow and scythe some bits and had thought of making hay. Storage would be a bit of a problem and I hadn't even thought of making bales in such a way so the idea could be very useful.

Slowworm, the hay is for sheep - I have a smallholding at about 1200’ and am using a small flock of Black Welsh Mountain sheep to help manage about eight to ten acres of unimproved grassland for wildflowers. Great to find someone else helping to preserve the 3% that is left of the UK’s wildflower meadows.

There are lots of utube vids showing variations on the hand baling theme - simplest ones are just standing in a wheely bin to compress the hay.

This link adds a few missing details from the Texas pine straw baler

http://ncforestservice.gov/publications/LongleafLeaflets/LL11.pdf

but there are still a few things you have to work out for yourself. If you get as far as making, please feel free to PM me and I’ll pass on any insights I’ve gained from making and using it.

ATB.

 

[slowworm]

We only have a couple of acres of meadow and are still in the process of working out how best to manage them. I know a lot of people cut them for hay but ours tends to produce a lot of late season flowers such as knapweed which is great for bees at this time of year. It also provides seeds and protection for animals over winter which in turn feed owls etc.

We still have room for a few animals, so making and storing hay would be useful.

 

[Alan De Enfield]

Impressed !!!!

 

[Nomad64]

We only have a couple of acres of meadow and are still in the process of working out how best to manage them. I know a lot of people cut them for hay but ours tends to produce a lot of late season flowers such as knapweed which is great for bees at this time of year. It also provides seeds and protection for animals over winter which in turn feed owls etc.

We still have room for a few animals, so making and storing hay would be useful.

We are very much at the beginning of our wildflower meadow caring “journey” but have had lots of advice from the local Wildlife Trust and friends from other Trusts. Similar groups, Coronation Meadows and/or local scything enthusiasts may be a source of guidance and possibly volunteer labour in return for somewhere to practice and refreshments!

http://coronationmeadows.org.uk/

The advice we have had (in relation to our meadows at least) is that it is important to keep the soil nutrient poor by regularly removing the hay crop and/or grazing it to encourage the wildflowers which will be outcompeted by the grasses if nutrient levels rise and/or PH levels change.

Last year the weather was against me so I ended up just cutting about half the meadows (mostly with a flail mower rather than a scythe) and dumping the damp hay to keep the meadows as they would have been managed up until the mid-20th century when the steep decline in traditional wildflower meadows began.

This year with the long dry spell and being a bit more organised, we had the option of getting neighbours or contractors in to cut and bale the hay but would be very much working to their timetables and they would obviously want to do the job in one go rather than being able to mow and graze selectively and at different times to allow different flowers to do their thing at different times.

I’ve been leaving knapweed and thistles standing (though I have been knocking thistles them down just before they seed) for the pollinating insects and leaving the interesting invertebrates like this nursery web spider unmolested.



Leaving unmown margins will still give shelter to voles, shrews etc.

The baler appeals because if the weather looks good for a 2 or 3 day spell, I can spend a hour or so mowing a small area one day, rake and turn it the next and make a few bales on the third. The two month dry spell has broken (sadly the local farmers prayers for rain were answered in dramatic fashion the local village agricultural show) and I am now regretting not building my baler earlier.

If you have not already got a copy, I can thoroughly recommend Meadowland by JLS.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meadowland-private-life-English-field/dp/0552778990

Have fun with your meadow.

 

[slowworm]

We've not had much luck from the obvious organisations to be honest. The main suggestion was find a farmer to cut it but we've tried and the fields are too small for modern tractors. We've also found the advice from one organisation tends to only suit their current interests and may not suit everything. I would still suggest others contact their own local bods as I expect some are better than others.

Yes, we don't fertilise ours and we try to remove clippings as we use them for composting. We've spent a couple of years seeing what grows and what's living there and taken it from there. The last couple of weeks for example we have clouds of young gold finches on them and we know they like the knapweed seed heads over winter.

This is the piece I found about owls, we mostly have tawnies about all the time but have seen the odd barn owl. https://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/how-to-manage-land-for-barn-owls/

We're happy to concentrate on the late flowering plants as we luckily have a few fields around us that are only cut once a year so provide plenty of spring wild flowers. We have an added interest as we keep honey bees as well.

 

[Nomad64]

We've not had much luck from the obvious organisations to be honest. The main suggestion was find a farmer to cut it but we've tried and the fields are too small for modern tractors. We've also found the advice from one organisation tends to only suit their current interests and may not suit everything. I would still suggest others contact their own local bods as I expect some are better than others.

Yes, we don't fertilise ours and we try to remove clippings as we use them for composting. We've spent a couple of years seeing what grows and what's living there and taken it from there. The last couple of weeks for example we have clouds of young gold finches on them and we know they like the knapweed seed heads over winter.

This is the piece I found about owls, we mostly have tawnies about all the time but have seen the odd barn owl. https://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/how-to-manage-land-for-barn-owls/

We're happy to concentrate on the late flowering plants as we luckily have a few fields around us that are only cut once a year so provide plenty of spring wild flowers. We have an added interest as we keep honey bees as well.

That’s a real shame about your local WT - I’ve had nothing but great help from ours, they came last year to update the meadow survey that they had done a few years ago for the previous owners and have been free and impartial with their guidance. They have also come out to survey our pond for great crested newts and offered to help clear trees from in and around it to improve the habitat for GCNs.

I’ve had a couple of friends here for the weekend who work for different WTs in the West Midlands and (inbetween the downpours), they have been entertaining themselves wildflower, grass and invertebrate nerding.

Above our top meadow is 5000 acres of rough moorland grazed by a few sheep and ponies so plenty of unmolested rough grazing but although we regularly see and hear tawny owls (see link below), barn owls are more of a rarity.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/30865846@N02/40583326285/in/dateposted/

I’ve collected quite a few of what I assume are tawny owl pellets lately and (regressing to a misspent childhood), I had a go at dissecting one.





Plenty of red kites, buzzards, kestrels and the odd sparrow hawk to keep the local voles etc on their toes - the numbers do seem to be significantly down on last year, although I understand that vole population tends to go through boom and bust cycles.

There are some other areas which I have been adopting a policy of benign neglect, allowing gorse, thistles, rose bay willow herb etc. licence to do their thing (within reason) to encourage the pollinators.

The late snows put paid to my plans to start keeping bees (planning to take a course this autumn and spring) and hopefully most of the 400 plus trees from the two Woodland Trust pollinator packs I planted, largely for the benefit of future bees will have survived the drought. Hopefully the teasels I planted to encourage finches will have survived and will start to produce seed heads next year.

It’s been hard work and I am deeply envious of friends who are able to reel of the Latin as well as common names of the different grasses etc. that make up the meadows but hopefully I will get a working knowledge before my brain loses the capacity to learn new stuff.

Good luck with your wildflower meadow adventure and if you want any further pics or info on the baler, please let me know.