The weather has been wonderful over the last few weeks and we have been able to make plenty of hay in both round and small square bales.

I try to make some hay every year as I like to feed it once a week to dry cows, as I find it helps to reduce the incidence of dwarf calf syndrome.

However, for the last number of years, it has been exceedingly difficult to make good hay. It has often been a snatch and grab, with short weather windows leaving everything very rushed.

This year has been different. There has been no shortage of hot sunny weather and there has been no need to panic about the hay.

Shed

I have made about 100 round bales and about 900 small square bales. We now have all safely in the shed, although lifting the small square bales is something that no one is too fond of.

I do not normally make small square bales, but I had a few people asking me to make some and that they would buy them from me.

I actually made extra with the intention of selling more out of the field, but, as it turns out, everyone in the country seems to have made their own. It has meant that I had to find room in the shed.

That is not a big issue and I will have no difficulty selling them during the winter. However, none of my sons were that keen on helping gather the bales and they have warned me never to make small square bales again.

New Holland

While making these small square bales, it got me thinking back to my childhood. When I was very young, my father used to bale hay for farmers around the country with his MF135 and a New Holland baler. At the time, it seemed as if he was at it for weeks non-stop.

I remember him baling hay for ourselves and the bales would lie in the field the way they came out of the baler for over a week while he was away. He was busy baling hay for other farmers, and he did not have time to lift ours. We only had the one tractor so there was nothing else we could do.

He would always leave early in the morning. He shaved and put on clean clothes and a sports jacket before he would head off.

He might have went looking very smart, but it was a different story when he came home. He would be burnt from the sun and both him and his clothes would be covered in dust from the hay.

At the time there were no mobile phones and very few landlines, so everyone who wanted him would have to drive around the country and ask about his whereabouts.

My mother used to deliver the baler twine to him. She would also have to go around, following fields that had been baled, and asking where he went afterwards.

My younger sister and I would go with her, and we thought this was great fun.

Bother

There were times when the baler would give bother and he would get me to stand on the back to watch what was going wrong. It was a horrendous job with the heat and the dust.

When I look back, I get a true sense about how hard my father had to work just so that he could make a living. We would not have our farm had it not been for the hard work of my father.

Everywhere he visited, he would have been fed and watered. It was mostly brought out to the field and there would have been a selection of homemade food, which was all washed down with a few beers. Times and people have changed.

This seemed to go on for the whole summer. We hear a lot about how this hot weather is a new phenomenon, however, I remember summers like this all the time and long before global warming was even thought about.