Make Hay While the Sun Shines

UPDATE: To allay the fears and concerns some have expressed as well as to caution those who are unaware:

You must proceed with caution when feeding horses grass clippings. Big piles of fresh grass clippings can do great harm to horses in some situations. Please do your homework before you feed grass clippings to a horse.

My horses are on pasture. The grass clippings I am giving them are from a portion of the same field they are pastured on. The clippings are from late-season grass and are dead and dried...very much like hay. It's the same thing they are grazing on, just from the other side of the fence.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

OK, I'm technically not making hay, since I'm not drying and baling. But I got this idea for how to use the grass that I'm mowing on the approximately acre and a half that's not fenced paddock. It's a lot of grass that could be put to good use!

I got a sweeper to tow behind our lawn tractor. Besides gathering up all the cut grass for either animal feed or compost, I can use it to sweep up leaves in the fall. I'm sure as heck not going to rake all that!

When the box said "some assembly required", they didn't go into enough detail. It's not designed to be assembled by a small woman without a lot of upper body strength.

Here's the parts inventory...

That rolled up black thing on the right is the hopper bag. This is what the directions said it looked like.

The reality of it is that it was so tightly rolled that it wouldn't stay unrolled. I had to crawl into it and use my entire body to hold it open enough to get the frame inside. Good thing there's no video of that! I'm not a contortionist so I'm sure it was a sight to see!

Three hours later, I had the darned thing together. It was sheer stubbornness that made it possible.

I took two turns around the one part of the field that hadn't been mowed yet and the sweeper bag was full!

So into the dry lot I went and dumped it out. There's a lot of grass there!

And the horses love it!

Doing this won't save on my hay bill. There's not nearly enough to make a difference. However, it's making use of cut grass that otherwise would be wasted. Plus, I get to pretend I'm a real rancher while I'm out there on my lawn tractor!

Oh, just a little tip...don't wear a fleece jacket when you're mowing. You'll never, ever, ever get the cuttings out of the fleece. Ever!