WA hay: Low stocks, high prices

It was an unusually good morning. Sunny. No rain. Just the right amount of dew to soften the hay and no breeze to dry it out.

Because the hay stayed soft, balers ran until 7:40 a.m. Usually, they're done at dawn because of breeze or too much dew, which can cause bales to mold.

But this had been a good morning. Five balers started shortly after midnight, producing about 8,300 bales before they quit. Sweet alfalfa aroma lingered.

"Feed stores like nice soft hay. For us air out of the north is the kiss of death. It's dry coming off the Beezley Hills. Then we can't bale. The (alfalfa) leaves crumble and turn to powder," said farmer Steve Senn.

Senn, 57, and his brother, Randy, 59, have been in the hay business all of their lives. They're accustomed to waiting for hay to dry after damaging rains, reraking only as a last resort. They're used to waiting out wind. But in their 30-plus years of haying, they've never seen stocks so low and prices so high.

Stack yards are virtually empty of last year's crop and the wholesale price of good to premium quality alfalfa is $230 to $260 a ton versus $140 to $150 a year ago, the Senns said.

Prices are driven by a shortage of production as farmers switched to higher-paying corn and wheat. Hay farmers can't find land to lease for three to four years for the life of a hay stand because landowners are more willing to gamble year-to-year on grain prices, Steve Senn said.

Unable to maintain some of their leases, the Senns are down from 1,400 acres to 800, and they're dealing with fuel and fertilizer costs that have nearly doubled.

While their first-cutting yield is above average at 2.75 tons per acre, their annual tonnage will be down because the cool spring has delayed the crop about two weeks.

First cutting is normally done by now, second cutting comes in mid-July, third in mid-August and fourth about Labor Day. All of that is being pushed back and there likely will be no fourth cutting, said Phil Peterson, Washington State University Extension forage specialist in Ephrata.

Total hay production is down substantially from a year ago, Peterson said. In March, the National Agricultural Statistics Service estimated 40,000 fewer acres in Washington hay production this season. That number will be updated June 30.

A lot of first cutting was damaged by rain, but the Senns, favored by a rain shadow, received only very light rain. They hoped good quality would give them high-priced export sales.

Most farmers produce the large 4-by-4-by-8-foot bales that weigh close to a ton, commonly called one-ton or big bales. They're more efficient to handle and dairies are equipped to handle them.

But the Senns stick with smaller, 85- to 100-pound bales, called two-tie because they're bound with two strands of twine. They normally produce 5,600 tons in a season, selling most of it to Auburn-based Del's Farm Supply for its chain of feed stores. Customers like the small bales because they can't handle the big ones.

If the Senns switched to big bales, they would have to spend a lot on new equipment and reduce their harvest crew of 10 people.

"We have strong loyalties to the people who have been with us a lot of years. We don't want to cut them loose," Steve said.

Their swathers (cutters), Orville and Janice Page, have been with them for 20 years. Dean and Dennie Durfee, 70-year-old twins, are two of six balers. "They're hard of hearing. One will say something. The other one won't hear him but will finish the sentence. They're thinking the same whatever they're doing," Randy said.

Alfalfa has the highest protein if cut before it flowers. The swathing machines leave the hay in windrows that dry for three to four days before two rows are raked into one for baling. The baling is done two days after the raking, and then Steve Senn and two other men scramble to get the bales off the field. They don't want the bales bleached from too much sun, and they want to start watering the field again as soon as possible to grow the next cutting.

There is a lot more to making hay than most people realize, Randy said.

The bales are picked up with strange-looking contraptions called harobeds. They scoop up bales while traveling at 3 to 5 mph and haul 89 bales per load. Fully loaded and scoop up, the harobeds scoot across the field at up to 10 to 15 mph and carefully drop their loads in an ever-expanding stack, 10 bales high, on the edge of the field. There's a plastic sheet under the stack and it's later covered with tarps to protect the hay from sun and rain.

Prior to harobeds, farmers had to buck bales onto wagons by hand. The Senns remember those days. When harobeds came on the scene in the 1950s, "they seemed like miracle machines," Steve said.

But after years of operating them, they've taken their toll on his hearing, his wrists and his knees. Too much jumping out of the cab has resulted in surgery to both his knees.

Randy has back problems and no longer bales, but supervises the baling crew.

"Maybe at our age my brother and I should be looking for an easier life, but we've waited our whole lives to see prices get to this," Steve said. "So why quit now?"

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Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenworld.com