Why does it always RAIN?

[Part Timer]

Why does it always rain when i mow hay? It seems like I cant win!

 

[GLZ]

Second most stressful thing to me is hay cutting, only behind heifers calving.  I swear I was a nervous wreck all week watching the skies.

 

[GoWyo]

Mowing hay is the best way to make it rain.

 

[wowcows]

It won't dry standing up. If you could do something about it it would be different! Listen to the weather chanel other than your local weather report and follow that and that might help. Our local guy is so good that if he says sun it da_ned sure will rain. <beer>

 

[Part Timer]

There was only a 30% chance of rain for one day out of the week. Everybody mowed hay, the only one's that got away with it were the guys that bagged it.

 

[Show Heifer]

You can't put it up, if you don't ever knock it down. (My Dad's saying, not mine!)

Actually, I have mowed hay watching rain clouds. Actually mowed hay with major storms coming and just barely made it in the barn when large hail and a "tornado" was near by.
It doesn't bother me if freshly mowed hay gets rained on.  What ruins hay is when your RAKING hay and it rains. That is when hay gets ruined!

 

[lightnin4]

We were lucky this week.  There were pop-up thunderstorms every day all around us and it didn't rain on the 3 hay fields we had cut.  It came a monsoon at my parents house the day we were baling, but quit 3/4 of a mile south right before it got to one hay field.  At the same time, I was watching it rain just South of my property line (just past our best hay field where my Dad was baling), but it never made it to my farm.  And all it did was lightly sprinkle at the other farm where we had hay cut and rained hard 2 miles away! Whew! <party>

I figure we're doomed next time!

 

[oakview]

I don't enjoy rain on my hay, but after living through 1977 with such a severe drought in our little area that there was abolutely no crop (before the days of now common crop insurance), I don't get too upset with a little untimely rain.  The only beans worth combining made 6 bushels/acre, no corn was harvested at all.  To make matters worse, the ground was so dry that several water pipes froze under ground the next winter.  Nothing better than fastening 500 feet of garden hose together and watering 6 pens of 150 head of hogs each in a trough in below zero weather!  I guarantee my life would have been different had that not happened.  Hard to tell if it would have been better or worse, just different.  I watch both the weather channel and local forecasts before cutting hay and hope for the best.

 

[GoWyo]

I get weather online from National Weather Service.  Best way to get to it for the area you want to see is to type "NOAA [your city]" in a search engine and it should pop up.  Has current radar, etc. and is the same info the commercial weather guessers use.

 

[Part Timer]

Its just frustrating. They are calling for thunderstorms on monday, so about the time its ready to bale it will rain again.

 

[Show Heifer]

Have to rub it in.... my hay is being baled as I type!! No rain. Not one drop!!

 

[shortyjock89]

Yup! We put up about 500 squares today, and about 50 rounds off of our first little hay field yesterday.

 

[aj]

Once I held off swathing cane cause of chance of rain. It hailed it to pieces and I didn't get one bale out it. I think that if I would have had it in a windrow I could have salvaged a bunch of it.

 

[WIshowgirl]

30% chance of rain on one day, we cut hay. The next day it poured.  (lol)

 

[iahogfarmer]

Around here, its always a  gamble mowing hay. Reason being the weatherman on the local news cant get yesterdays weather right  (lol)

 

[WHLR SIMMENTALS]

There's more gambling going on in a hay field then in the casinos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!