No rain dancing until Christmas Eve, please

Christmas in this part of the world is always a surprise – you never know whether it will be stinking hot or if you’ll be running inside to the warmth of the pudding. This year, I hope it pours!

We have a huge slab of the farm’s pasture cut for hay and it’s going to be baled in the next couple of days. If we get some nice follow-up rains, our farm will be celebrating the New Year with spring-like pastures. If it disintegrates into a series of scorchers, we will have short, dessicated pastures.

No matter what happens, I have made the right decision to cut the stalk off and return quality to the pastures. Too much stalk for dairy cows is like too many rice cakes for an athlete: there just isn’t enough goodness in the diet. On the other hand, any farmer will tell you it’s foolish to be smug on the promise of a weather forecaster with your hay still in windrows.