Making hay

Our house has a good sized garden but over the years I have converted the lawns to vegetable beds and car parking until we now only have a single lawn about 15m square.

The lawn is where my daughter’s pet rabbits live, at least in summer. By moving their pen around the lawn I hope to keep the grass down but now it is growing too fast even for them. Returning from holiday (the rabbits also had a holiday at a local rabbit hotel) I found the grass had grown so lush and long that we didn’t dare put the rabbits on it for fear they would eat themselves sick or worse. Reluctantly I got out our flymo and started to laboriously cut the grass. The flymo doesn’t pick up and as I struggled through the cut mulch I suddenly had an idea. My daughter spends a fortune on little bags of hay from the local pet shop, so why don’t we cut our own hay from the lawn. I don’t own a scythe but I got out my sickle and quickly cut a barrow full of grass that I dried on the roof of the rabbit run.

The success of this initial haymaking encouraged me to up the production.

I have made 3 drying racks for rushes out of 2x1 timber, where I dry rushes in June and July for seating my chairs. The racks are about 2m square and have a crossbar every 12 inches.  Once loaded with rushes the racks are raised into the roof of my shelter/workshop where they can dry in the wind out of the rain and out of my way. Once dry the rushes are bundled into bolts and stored in my garage until needed for chair seating. The racks are now free to dry something else. By adding a layer of chicken wire to the racks I can pile a layer of cut grass on each rack about 6 inches deep where it will dry and gently perfume my workshop for a few weeks. Once dry each rack will produce a small bag of hay that would have cost £5 at the local pet store. My daughter says the rabbits prefer my hay. At the moment all the hay gets eaten long before winter, when we have to resort to the pet shop again. I need to up production further and possibly invest in a scythe. 

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