Figuring out just how much hay I need to buy for the winter is a little more challenging this year than in past years. In previous years I bought hay from my friend Charlie, but, sadly, Charlie passed away last winter and I've needed to find a new source of hay. I've found someone nearby who is selling hay, but the bale sizes are different than the ones I used to get so I'm not sure how many bales will get me through the winter. I don't think going by volume is always accurate because some bales are denser than others, so I decided to try weighing the bales from last year and this year to see the difference. Fortunately, I happened to still have two bales from last year and a crane scale I purchased years ago for some reason.
Using the tractor to lift two of the new bales I came up with weights of 611 and 594 lbs.
Then I lifted the bales from last year and got 416 and 393 lbs. For simplicity I'll go with 600 for this years bales and 400 for last years bales. So bales from this year are on average 1.5 times the size of bales from last year. Last year I purchased 167 bales or 66,800 lbs of hay and that was more than enough. So 112 of the 600 lbs bales should be enough for the coming winter. I bought 73 bales so far so I need 39 more. That's good to know.
On another front I finally got around to buying a replacement electric fence remote for the one that slipped out of my pocket and got lost in the grass. These remotes are shaped in such a way as to make it easy for them to slip out of your pocket. The previous one was grass green too, which sucked when I spent 3 hours searching through the grass looking for it.