Haying in Connecticut

Ok, and these are from Canterbury (town south of me) this morning as well.

This is what happens when something on the order of 20" of rain in May and June keep you from getting to the first cutting until July!

About 1/2 the fields got cut during a few good days at the end of May. The rest are like these -- absolutely overloaded with hay. You'd think we raised grain out here for the amount of brown grass in the fields right now!

I believe both fields are the same part-time family farmers.

This one had been raked into rows with a side-deliery rake:

They're all in the Connecticut River Valley, about an hour's drive (50 miles) west of me.

It's "Connecticut Shade Tobacco" almost exclusively. If you buy a premium (hand wrapped) cigar, you have a 50/50 shot of it being wrapped in Connecticut Shade.

There are frames over the rows that are used to create a cheesecloth "tent" over the plants once their established. It keeps the direct sun off of them (the "shade"), and kind of acts like a greenhouse to boost temperature and humidity.

I have seen a few farms, usually tucked away on a backroad, that grow tobacco simply in a field...I don't know if it's broadleaf, or I suspect it's seed tobacco for the shade farmers.

Looking up that stats, there's only about 2,000 acres of it grown. But it brings in around $40 million a year...$20,000/acre ain't bad, eh?

The area's tourist name is actually "The Last Green Valley" because it's the last strip of land that shows up "dark" on the night-time satellite photos in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor.

And on this side, we're tedding.

IIRC the tractor was a 4020...but I didn't write it down.

I had to run down to Home Depot late in the afternoon when my local hardware stores didn't have the right size part I needed for a project, and drove back by here, alas without a camera.

The field in the first pic had already been baled and cleaned up. An older gentleman was running a small square baler dropping them on the ground. An older lady was running the JD in this pic, now pulling a side-delivery rake to make the windrows (the field hadn't been windrowed in the AM).

Meanwhile, the field in this pic by 5pm had been windrowed, and half of it was already in round bales (guessing 4 x 4). Baler being towed by a Ford.