Behind the bales
This photo is just the tractor loading bales last night. Seems pretty routine for a farmer, right?
But these bales are a bit different.
We bought them in the fall of 2024… and just finally got the last load home this spring of 2026.
Not because we didn’t need them. Around here, it’s always nice to have extra feed on hand “just in case.” The tricky part is that you never truly know how much feed you’ll need until the grass is growing again in spring.
Cold winters mean cows eat more because feed helps them stay warm. A mild winter can stretch feed further. A late spring means feeding bales longer. Too wet or too dry weather can delay grazing. Every season changes the numbers.
So even when we try to stock feed cautiously, there’s still a lot of guessing involved.
Anyways, we thought we’d share this little behind-the-scenes story because the truth is… we definitely do not have it all together over here.
We try our best, but we still fall behind sometimes, and this was one of those things.
From the outside looking in, taking a year and a half to haul home a load of bales probably sounds ridiculous. Honestly, sometimes it felt ridiculous to us too. The bales were paid for long ago. They were only about 5 miles from our house.
But the thing people don’t always see is that even the “simple” jobs can turn into hours and hours of work — or get pushed aside completely because something more urgent comes up first.
When we bought the bales in fall 2024, we did haul some home before winter hit. But we ran out of time.
Spring 2025 came and we brought a semi in to haul more, but the bales were sitting in a hay field. That means there’s only a short window before the crop starts growing and you risk damaging the plants by driving on it.
And honestly… last spring and summer were a whirlwind.
Tony had just gone back to work after parental leave into a very demanding job. Kierstyn was trucking almost full time. We had two young kids at home, daily chores, were trying to grow the meat business, and had just started doing farmers markets too.
So the bales got pushed to the back burner again.
Then the crop got too tall to drive on until it was cut. Another window missed.
First cut came off. Then the crop started growing back and we didn’t want to hurt the yield, so we waited again.
Second cut came off… and somehow we still missed that window too.
Then came another fall. Another winter.
And suddenly here we are in spring 2026 finally bringing the last load home.
Thankfully our neighbour was very understanding through all of it.
The field was dry enough, the crop hadn’t grown too high yet, and we were able to sneak in and get the last load hauled off.
So yes… it may have taken us a year and a half to finish the job.
But we did finally get it done.
