Painless

Every year, haying has been awful. When we were unloading the moving truck on the day we moved in, we were approached by a couple of neighbors who offered to cut our hay. Being honest people ourselves, and knowing that these people were our new neighbors, we didn't think to ask for references in order make a choice based on skills, etc. We just gave the job to the first folks who asked. It seemed fair at the time. We've regretted it ever since.

The job went to our neighbors across the road (and their extended family.) To us, "neighbor" means that they are about ¼ of a mile away "as the crow flies." From the start, they acted a little too freely with our land and a little bit rudely. To start off with, one of them would drive over in his truck or "go buggie," as he called it, without calling first, and park at the end of our sidewalk. Then he would honk until I came out. Often I was cooking dinner or tending a baby. And the whole time I chatted at the end of the walk, my kids would be unattended. This annoyed me greatly, and he was never apologetic about it, but I learned that he had emphysema, so I forgave the inconvenience and impropriety and acted as though this were a perfectly normal thing to do.

Also,  he or another one of them, would come over and drive through our fields unannounced in their all-terrain vehicle, crushing the hay and leaving gates open, sometimes weeks in advance of haying. One of us would hear the noise and see them through the window. They wouldn't even drive on the mowed paths! Then there was the fact that they would show up to hay without calling first most times. Also, they would cut and leave parts undone without consulting with us. They would leave their round bales on the fields a long time, so that they killed spots and so that they tore up the newly growing hay when they finally came to haul them off. They even left their machinery parked in our  hay fields. And this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Our neighbors weren't timely. Every year but one, our "first cutting" was done too late. Because of this we went multiple years with only one cutting, even when no inclement weather made cutting difficult. This was bad for our hay crop as it was always past prime. It also allowed for weeds to seed themselves. It was also bad for our pocketbooks. It cut our profit in half. 

They were wishy washy about when they would start too. We'd try to nail them down about what day they would cut and often they'd tell us something that didn't turn out to be correct. And they'd cancel on us once arrangements had been made sometimes as well. Once they called us to cancel cutting the next day because it was "supposed to rain." The chance was only 3%! What do you say to that?! And, they made the decisions about when to cut without consulting us.

One year they came to us after we had been stewing all summer about it not being cut and told us that they decided that they weren't cutting it that year! My husband put his foot down and made them cut and bale it anyway, despite the hay being practically worthless. He informed them that they cut it this year or they never cut it again. In order to placate us, they promised we’d be the first field they cut the next year. Of course, they didn't cut our field first. In fact the year after that they didn't either. They recruited a new field and put it in the rotation before ours!

Our neighbors weren't good at drying the hay. They never left it in the field long enough. They never let it sit long enough after raking it. They tried to cut the evening of one day, let it sit the next, rake it in the middle of the third, and bale it right after raking it. Given this short time span, the usual high humidity here, and the heavy dews that are standard, often the hay they baled was too wet and green. We had to cure bales under our gazebo and such for fear of spontaneous combustion causing our barn to go up in smoke. And sometimes the bales would mold because of the moisture too.

Our neighbors weren't good at baling either. Every year untied or broken bales were left on the field after they drove off and before we ever touched them. Many of the square bales that were tied were too loose to stack in the truck, pitch into the barn, or stack in the loft. Usually one strand of twine was tight and the other was loose. This meant that they exploded to bits easily. Even if we managed to baby the bales in order to get them stored away, the twine broke frequently when someone shifted them from the hay barn.

Here's part of a stack of loosely baled hay from a previous year.

Our neighbors park their baler out in the field all year and I think the twine had partially rotted, but they didn't want to replace it. My son reported that they had two different diameters of twine strung so that the tension would always be off on one side. It made it awfully hard to sell our hay, so we were lucky when another neighbor got three horses and would buy our sad bales from us at a discounted price, coming to get them one at a time as she needed them. I estimate that we lost about 1/5 of the hay just to bad baling! 

Our neighbors had trouble with their round bales too, sometimes dropping an unwrapped bale on the field. On one occasion when this happened, one of them was rather ineffectively ramming the hay with their ATV in an attempt to spread out the hay so that the baler could drive over it again. (They never re-baled our broken square bales.) My hardworking and thoughtful oldest son grabbed a rake and went out to help. As soon as he showed up, they left him to spread out an entire giant round bale that was taller than he was, all by himself. They just drove off! 

Our neighbors were obviously not hard workers. Every year we had issues with what they cut and how they cut it. There would be strips of un-mown hay left standing in the field, and they would leave sections of the field uncut. They would refuse to do the pasture behind the barn unless we REALLY pushed them, and they never mowed inside the unused riding ring. One time they just argued about it, saying it was too hard to maneuver in that shape of field. Another year they just lied; they told us they couldn't get their equipment into the riding ring, even though the gate to it is the same size as the one to the other fields. After three summers, they pretended they didn't know what to cut even though we asked them every single year to cut certain parts that they always tried to leave uncut. We never understood how they could be in doubt or why they didn't just ask if they were. Then when we brought it up, they acted like it was too late to cut those parts. And in the end, they were just shortchanging themselves! They were cutting into their own profit. In fact, one hard winter they bought hay from us (which we sold to them for a pittance) because they hadn't put up enough to get their cattle through a long winter. It was mind-boggling.

And every year the interactions got worse. Once they just horned into the hay barn and pretended  to help us stack bales just so that they could count how many bales we put up, and how many bales our neighbor who rents barn space from us put up. (They cut her hay too.) They never helped us load, pitch or stack hay at any other time. Then they tried to get her to give them part of her portion of hay, claiming they were shortchanged. My husband did the math and it turned out they got more than their fair share. Once they pushed us on fertilizer (to increase yield and control weeds they said) even though they didn’t cut at peak protein content or to prevent weed heading. Heck, they didn't even cut twice a year- which was bad for the hay but also, really just robbing themselves of income. In addition, they took a little more of our portion of hay every year. (Our agreement was that we gave them ⅔ of the crop in exchange for cutting and baling.) 

The breaking point came when they made a deal with one of our steady hay customers, the one who rents hay storage space in our barn, to sell to her square bales off of our field cheaper than she buys it from us (because when you buy off of the field you do the lifting, hauling, and storing of the hay, so is discounted.) The previous situation was that they square baled our share and round baled theirs. The stinky thing was, that not only did they steal our customer and try to get us to put up their hay (because we swap haying labor with this customer neighbor) but they left a large section of one of the main fields uncut and shorted us a large portion of our hay, without even bothering to inform us. In trying to talk this last bit through with them, they informed my husband that they had more hay than they needed, even though we knew they took on a new field that year from some other neighbors. Even though we didn't have more than WE needed. When my husband got a little frustrated with them, one of them suggested that we find someone else to cut our hay and insinuated that we couldn't find anyone to do it better. So, this year we did arrange to have someone else cut and bale our hay!

We had been so unhappy with them for so long, but put up with it all for the sake of neighborliness and peace. Every year I talked to my husband about how we should really get someone else to cut our hay. Every year, big-hearted man that he is, he convinced me to give them another chance. We even let them run their cattle on our fields for next-to-nothing during a drought. We sold them hay for a song when they ran out of fodder. We helped them multiple times when their cows and horses got out. We gave them "the benefit of the doubt" for years! The more generous and understanding we were, the more belligerent they got, and the more they took advantage. They must have thought that we were stupid? Maybe they thought we were know-nothing, rich, "city slickers?" I don't know. It makes me sad that our patience and generosity was met with the treatment they gave us.

We still send them Christmas cards. We still wave when we go by their place. We still work hard not to run over their dogs that dart out at our car when we drive by. My son still mows their yard for next to nothing. But, this year we got a neighbor who lives a little further away to cut our hay. Three people recommended him to us. He was communicative, speaking to my husband on the phone several times before cutting. He was punctual. He showed up when he said he would. He did a good job cutting. There were no unmown strips. He cut the riding ring, the pasture behind the pole barn, AND all parts of the other fields without being pushed to do so. He baled right when he predicted, and the bales were dry and tight. He didn't leave any machinery parked around for days. He removed his round bales from our field early the morning after haying. AND, he gave us more than the agreed upon share of hay. The whole process was peaceful and painless, just like it should be.