Happy New Year!

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! May the year be full of good health and prosperity. Have you broken you New Year's resolution yet? If not, congratulations! Keep it up. I hop you make this New Year turn out to be a great year for you and yours.

Over the Christmas/New Year's break I got to be more involved in the day to day farming activities than I have been for a long time. Winter has definitely arrived in NE KS. Most stockman, if not all, are now busy feeding their cattle. This takes precedence over most everything else. On Christmas day, I know for a fact one little girl and I'm sure there were many many more kids who had to wait until all the livestock was taken care of before they got to pen presents. The livestock must be taken care of before anything else is done, even on Christmas morning.

We enjoyed Christmas Eve at Matt's grandma's for Matt's dad's side, Christmas day with my grandma, parents, two sisters, their spouses and our niece, Christmas night with my mom's family, Friday night with Matt's mom's side and yesterday evening with Matt's grandma, grandpa, parents, siblings, spouses and children. So we have been busy as I'm sure you have been as well.

Times have changed quite a bit since I was growing up. I se on Facebook the posts of girlfriends/wives riding around with their man on weekends and holidays taking care of the cattle. I don't get to just ride along. Since I'm perfectly capable of feeding cattle myself, Matt sees no need for me to simply ride around. Growing up I can remember riding in the tractors with my dad. Mind you, this is before the days of buddy seats in tractors, or at least we didn't have one. I rode in between the seat and the window. One had to be careful when Dad would get out and come back in and sit down that a body part wasn't underneath any of the seat, otherwise it would get squished. Dad would bring a butter tub of popcorn to snack on since it took a lot of the morning to feed. On special occasions, like Christmas, he would bring along a pop as well. When there was snow on the ground, he would go bury the pop by the gate post in the snow. Then we would go feed a group of cattle and when we got back to the hay pile, he would go dig it out the snow and we'd have a cold pop to enjoy with the popcorn.

The fact that I don't get to simply ride around isn't the only thing that has changed since then. The way cattle are fed has changed as well. Growing up, each bale that was fed had to have the string that held the bale together taken off by hand. This meant that when the bales were snowy, icy and string frozen to it, it was difficult to get the string off the bale. The string had to come off one way or another, though. If a cow happened to eat the string, they could get it wrapped around their gut. Then producers have an expensive bet bill or a dead cow. Both unfavorable options so it was important to get all the string off. Now, however, there are bale processors. They are one of my favorite farm equipment inventions. When I was little, Dad would have to get out for every bale, fight the snow and ice to get the string off, then unroll the bale or put it in a bale feeder. It took a lot of ground space to unroll all the hay, if fed if feeders the feeders had to be there and it was time consuming. With bale processors, you decrease the amount o hay that i fed, there is no need for hay feeders, it takes less ground space and is much less labor intensive. Now the only reason to get out of the tractor is to open gates.

As I've said before, I'm no mechanic, but somehow the string gets pulled off and wrapped around the cruncher-upper. (Upon researching on the following website, I believe the correct name is a rotor.) This part grinds the hay down into smaller sections. It reminds me  of a mama bird feeding her babies. First, she eats it and chews it all up so her baby doesn't have to chew it. The cows still chew it, but its much more efficient. So the cows eat less quantity, but get more quality out of the smaller quantity of hay. It confuses me too...how can a smaller quantity of the exact same hay only ground up be more efficient then just putting out a bale of hay? There has been lots and lots of research that proves it is.

This website (https://www.haybuster.com/hb/BB2655.html) is a haybuster very similar to ours. It might be more in depth then what you're looking for, but they have several pictures showing how a haybuster works. They're haybuster is much cleaner than ours is.

Not only do we use the bale processor on a daily basis in the winter to feed the cows, but you can bed cattle down with it. Through the same processor one can put a straw bale in it and blow it out on the ground so cattle can have a warm and dry place to lay. You can use it for erosion control by blowing old hay or straw on the ground that's eroding to keep the soil in place. You an insulate grass seed that was planted. Hay busters are extremely useful. The main reason to have one is to, of course, feed cattle, but they can't be used for several other projects as well.

I'm so thankful, as we start this new year, for the family I got to see and spend time with around the holiday season and for equipment like hay busters that make the complicated job of farming, just a little easier and more efficient.

Happy New Year! Hope you have a great week!