My #wednesdaywalk posts are usually in urban smalltown Canadia. This week, we are going rural and visiting a farm in the winter time!
Up here, it has been damn cold and extra snowy for a few weeks. Today, the freeze broke and temperatures got up to a balmy 5 Celsius. The mission turned out to be a little soupy as some of the snow was melting into the laneway. You can see the hay that we were here to load on the wagon and grabber.
I am sure grabber is not the real name for this neat machine but watching it grab a big stack of hay bales, well you know. I am a marketer not a farmer and I am here to snap some pictures for our client New Eden Hay.
Here is the big guy discussing the high-quality, Mennonite grown Canadian hay with the adept grabber driver.
Fascinating to see how agile he is in this loader, buzzing in and out of the barn with the big square loads of hay bales. He loads them onto the back of a standard, 53 foot transport truck and shoves them to the front with the hydraulic arm. This one is headed to a feed store in North Carolina.
You might recognize Heavy-D from last week's Wednesday Walk as we were shoveling out a friend. Today, he is counting/inspecting the loads and stringing twine on each stack so they are easier for the client to unload down south.
Some of the hay is inside the barn but that doesn't slow the driver down. There is something fulfilling to see hard-working farmers work their land, invest in the right facilities and equipment, and have the ability to harvest, store and ship to where the hungry animals are even in the middle of winter.
There you have the back of the truck with only a couple more loads to go before the doors close. This business may be heavily impacted with the ridiculous tariff and the horse owners are going to have to pay more for their food in coming months. Might be time to spend some effort finding new countries with demand for high-quality hay! The show must go on.