In the heart of every farm lies its beating center - a place where the hustle and bustle of daily tasks come together. Among the essential structures on any farm is the barn, a symbol of hard work, tradition, and resourcefulness.
On this farm we never seem to have enough barns for storing our premium hay in which means in the past we have either plastic wrapped it and stored outside or sold hay out to horses and hay dealers. None of these solutions are suitable for the long term plans of the little hay co though.
We are growing year on year at a rate we can just about keep up with at the moment. The last 2 years now we have run short on our pure timothy hay towards the start of harvest, this year we didn't sell a single flake of timothy hay for horses or to wholesale, we used every strand for fulfilling customer orders and are still facing shortages until the next cut comes in.
so what measures are we taking to prevent running out of stock in the future?
A question I'm sure is on everyone's minds right now if they can't currently get their paws on their favourite Cotswold Sweet or Pure Timothy Hay and don't want to be left disappointed in the future.
Our problem is not production, we have more than enough land to harvest the hay we need to keep everyone supplied, we don't need to rely on the sun to dry the hay for us (although we would like some to dry the fields currently!). We have also taken on 2 new employees to work in the packing barn, we have gotten so busy we needed more hands on deck to help us keep up with getting the orders sent out on time. Our current problem that we are working against is lack of storage. We filled all the available barns to the brim with hay bales after the last harvest, sacrificing some of Leigh's precious tractors to be left out exposed to the elements, much to his disgust!
This winter we have been busy building a new storage barn which means we will be able to store an extra 1400 tonnes of hay this year on top of what we've previously been able to keep. To visualise that its around 12 double decker busses or 288 average sized elephants.
We've had a variety of setbacks with this project, mainly and predictably the weather! From a health and safety perspective we can't have builders out putting up insulated roofing if the 11th storm of the season has come to visit and risk having them blown halfway across Oxfordshire. But progress is being made, the roof is almost ready to go up and it will be completed in time for the next harvest.
Hopefully this update will put peoples worries at ease when it comes to future hay supply. We are working hard behind the scenes to keep up with our increasing demands and popularity.
