Remember the alfalfa patch we planted last fall?  Well, week before last we had it swathed for the first time.

We swathed it early because there was a lot of grass in it. In fact, in was so grassy you couldn’t even tell it was an alfalfa patch so we assumed there wasn’t going to be much alfalfa at all. When we walked out there after it was swathed, we were really surprised to see that there was actually more alfalfa in it than we thought.

While out there we made another discovery…

Yep, the chickens did a good job of hiding those eggs from us.  😕

A few days after it was swathed, our neighbor came and baled it for us late in the evening. The next day there was a chance for storms, so we planned to get out there and get the bales picked up as soon as everyone got home from work. Later that afternoon, Michael called and told me he had an accident at work and might need stitches in his finger but wanted my opinion on it first before he went in. So he came home, I looked at it and agreed it looked pretty nasty and could use stitches, so we headed in to ER. While we were there, the storms started rolling in and by the time we got out and half way home, it was pouring rain.

When it rains, it pours…. literally.

The bales got rained on, so we left them out for a few days to dry then stacked them on pallets with space between so the air could circulate around them.

We ended up with 56 bales from that little patch, which is way more than we were expecting. Even though it’s not the best alfalfa, it’s still pretty exciting to see all those bales stacked in that shed knowing we grew it.  It will help out on feed costs this winter and makes us a small step closer to being more self sufficient.

Can’t wait to see what the next cutting brings!