What’s been happening on the farm this spring?
Despite us all constantly complaining about the weather we have been trying to be productive.
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.
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 it’s around 12 double decker busses or 480 average sized elephants!
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.