Hay there...

Now we're talking "Alpaca Lifestyle" folks...

I never would have thought that a big time on a Monday morning would be standing around with a bunch of Mennonite and Amish farmers in the freezing cold at a hay auction.

With the impending arrival of our new "family", we thought it best to find a good source of hay for the winter. We're still trying to figure out how much, what kind, etc., but this was a good exercise in all of that. It seems farmers from all around bring in a load of various types and sizes of bales and look to get a good buyer, just like any auction. You get to compare the various loads for weight and type of mixture. Jo's much better at this, having been a "horse girl" in her youth, so I was just going along trying to pick something up. So it seems they auction off the hay by the ton, not the bale, since all the bales are different sizes. Very confusing, especially trying to keep up with the auctioneer. But it was entertaining, and set us off to look for someone local now that we have a feeling for the going prices. And then we have to figure how much our hay bin will actually hold. I think there's some math ahead of us on this.