One of my favorite days of the year is when David Weeks shows up and fills the barn with all the hay we need until the grass grows in 2023, sometime in late May or June.

David said the hay crop was excellent this year, despite the erratic winter, and his second-cut hay was as rich and beautiful as any hay I’ve ever seen. This will significantly boost the animals in the hard days of winter.

We ordered 60 bales of first-cut hay this year and ten bales of the more decadent second-cut.

We also ordered three bales of straw to put on a fall display on the Mansion lawn. We had about 12 bales left over from last year. The animals will get that hay first.

David is one of the people I most want to sit down and talk to; he is a long-time scholar and student of the contents of hay and how to make his bales as healthy and nutritious as possible.

He is a hay geek and knows everything there is to know about soil and planting and mixing it.

Maria and David throw and stack the hay together; I’m banned from this ritual, which I love.

I couldn’t recall all of the ingredients he puts into his hay; they are beautiful to touch, smell, and look at.

I’m not sure of the cost yet, I’ll call John at Power Products to pay, and I’ll find out. We all trust one another.

Whatever they charge is fair.

Ironically, today is the first that we’ve put hay out into the bins for the donkeys and sheep.

We always know when it’s time to switch from grass to hay when the animals prefer the hay to the mostly warn and nutrition-barren grass.

David always knows when to deliver it.

Hungry animals will eat the hay, but they miss the sweet grass already. They will be happy when it returns next year.

This morning, they all rushed to the hay bins. The grass isn’t doing it for them any longer. But it lasted a lot longer than it used to.

We feed the animals one-third of a bale a day, and a little hay goes a long way. David’s bales are big.

We save the more nutritious second-cut grass for cold days and winter storms when the animals need all the energy they can get. This weekend, we plugged in the heating unit for the animal’s water tank. Heated water helps keep them warm.

I love being fully prepared for winter; we work all summer to be ready – ordering and stacking firewood, ordering and stacking hay, getting the wood stoves cleaned and ready, clearing out the gardens, and preparing them for winter.

The price of everything has gone up and way up.

The stocking of the barn tells us winter is close; everything is changing, the ground, the air, the light.

We wake up in the dark now. It also reminds me of the poor and the needy; they are much on my mind this year. As the official Bedlam Farm Quartermaster, I am responsible for winter preparations.

I can relax a bit now. We are lucky.

I know many people here elsewhere are hurting much more than we are. There is a fund here to help older people pay for heating oil. We’ll help.