Gordon St. Hilaire Teacher & Organic Farmer

Gordon St.Hilaire and his family farm wanted to share a recap post on our hay production series. We usually begin our hay process in early June and wrap up sometime in August/September. Obviously, the weather has a significant impact on this process. The hay is mowed, tedded, raked, and then baled. Previous videos on YouTube have discussed individual machinery and tractors that we use on the farm. Typically, we like to have 3 consecutive days of drying time before the hay is brought into our barn. This was a fun series of videos to record and our hope is that our followers have a better understanding of how our hay is produced.  Our White Face Herefords certainly have no complaints! Please check out our videos on our YouTube channel if you haven’t done so already. Enjoy your day!

Gordon St.Hilaire and his family farm wanted to share another piece of our hay production process. Last time, I introduced our New Holland 450 Utility Round baler. Today, I’d like to share information about our other baler. It is a 336 John Deere Square baler. This baler has been on our property since the early 1980’s. It was purchased second hand and has been a reliable unit. It requires maintenance such as greasing and oiling, pickup adjustment, knotter adjustment and making sure there is ample twine in the storage compartment. This baler is secondary these days, but still is needed as square bales can be fed by hand just in case there is modern day equipment while feeding our primary round bales. Stay tuned for our wrap up conversation on our hay production process next time. Have a great day! Watch a video on Gordon St.Hilaire's Family Farm YouTube.

Gordon St.Hilaire and his family farm are moving forward walking viewers through our next step in our hay production process which is the baling of our hay. We use two balers on the farm. Today, we are introducing our New Holland 450 Utility baler. This is a round baler and is strictly a dry only hay baler. It has a variable chamber to produce different size bales as well. We primarily produce 4x4 round bales for our needs. This baler was bought new a few years back and is very simple to operate. It uses conventional baler twine and requires maintenance such as greasing, pick up head adjustment and the oiling of chains before each use. About 90% of the hay we produce is round bales. We do still produce some square bales as well. We will discuss that baler next time. Have a great day!

Gordon St.Hilaire and his family farm continue to take viewers through the process of producing hay for our farm. We shared our Tedding machine last week and would like to share the next machine in the process which is our New Holland #56 rake. This machine puts the dried hay back into windrows to be baled. Our rake is a rolabar rake which means that it has only one reel. It is ground driven and uses many teeth that rotate on the reel to reassemble the hay into windrows to be baled by one of our two balers. This machine is easy to operate and requires minimal maintenance. This is another vital machine we use on our farm to produce top quality feed for our cattle.

Gordon St.Hilaire and his family farm shared the first machine we use in our hay production last which was our 479 New Holland. The next machine in our hay process is the hay Tedder.  This machine was bought new and works great! The Tedder has two rotating spools that are PTO driven from the tractor to scatter the new mowed hay. This evenly distributes the hay to allow the sun and wind to begin the drying process. This machine requires very little maintenance. The things that are checked before use are tire pressure, grease fittings, and adjustment of the height of the Tedder itself. It is a great machine and does a great job in our hay production.