After our crops have finished their work in the soil, they are cut and baled into large 5×6 round bales for winter feeding. Each year we feed over 1,300 bales to our cattle. Using our truck or a tractor, we unroll each bale, one by one, in long stripes across each pasture. While hay rings have their place, overrelying on them can mean neglacting the pasture ground. By unrolling each bale we not only feeds the cows, but we provide good ground cover for new plant growth that will come in the spring. Furthermore, the leftover hay that doesn’t get consumed breaks down over time and creates more biomass and organic matter in the soil. This in turn makes for a rich environment for bacteria and earthworms to do their part to make healthy soil. After the cattle eat the hay they leave manure across the entire field. In the spring we mechanically spread the manure out, creating fertilizer for all the plants to use. The photos below illustrate how much pasture coverage that we achive by unrolling hay throughout the winter.