16/07/2025
God's timing is rarely our timing- sometimes He has BIGGER plans.
You cannot be a farmer AND an atheist.
I was ready to call it the "worst hay year ever." And in my 12 years of making hay I knew it would happen eventually.
I've always driven myself to make the best hay I possibly could, but farming is 50% man, 50% God.
Slowly, over the years, I've learned to take a breath, and remember the other half of the equation. Especially this year. The worst drought we've ever seen, hit us hard - and the weather forecast was a yo-yo.
The rain schedule was tight . . . forecasting 3 days clear, then rain. With Michigan humidity and dew, it would be impossible for us to get all 3 fields done at once, so in early June we cut the first two.
It wasn't until a MONTH LATER that I finally gave up and made the call to cut the last field. The orchard grass was 45 days past due - it would be nothing but trash - I'd be lucky if my own horses would eat it. I hoped to MAYBE get 300 bales off the 8 acres.
It wasn't what I planned. Not what I wanted. And not what I THOUGHT I needed.
Finally, the forecast showed 5 days of clear weather, so I got to work.
As the grass went down, I realized something. The grass had GONE TO SEED and was busy REPLANTING my fields - fields that definitely needed it. The seed I buy is $250 a bag and HARD TO GET, yet here my field was dumping money back into itself.
But that wasn't all . . . I realized I was cutting 1st cutting AND second cutting. Thick, lush, leafy second cutting grass had rapidly grown in under the taller cover of 1st cutting, while ALSO driving out ALL THE WEEDS.
That's when it changed. Radars showed massive storms headed RIGHT FOR US. I prayed that perhaps God would spare our small farm and let the storms go around us.
The next morning, everything was still dry. And two days later I raked some of the BIGGEST windrows I have ever seen. Throughout the day, storms appeared and disappeared on the radar. We brought in not 300, but 700 bales of AMAZING hay.
It hadn't been what I wanted, but God gave me what I NEEDED, and the rain held off until the last bale was in the barn.
God's timing is always best.
