making hay

The grass in Little Forest was cut on Saturday. Here you can see the wonderfully named mower going through the crop.

With cutters on the front and back, it makes a wide cut through the long grass.

The green grass lays spread out across the field, left to dry in the sun.

The grass is turned a couple of times, bringing the wet grass underneath to the top and spreading it out . The sun shines and the grass dries out to become hay. By Wednesday the grass had dried out - you can see how it's changed from grass green to much lighter green - and the hay put into rows.

As soon as the hay has been rowed up, the tractor and baler come in and drive along the rows. The baler picks up the hay, compresses it into a bale, ties it up and shoots the bale out the back.

By the end of the day we have a few fields of hay bales, ready to cart away.

There's a bit of film here showing the rowing up and baling - it's not very good quality because we have such a slow broadband connection that it takes hours to upload anything of higher definition and my camerawork is a bit jumpy.