Putting Up Hay During Monsoon Season

 The past few weeks have been the stormiest weeks I can remember in the desert, with thunderstorms almost every day. All us desert denizens have had to make some adjustments to deal with the elevated humidity and strange stuff falling out of the sky! It's really nice not to have so much dust on our gravel roads, and Desert Girl absolutely loves jumping in all the puddles. However, trying to harvest the third crop of alfalfa has been a little tricky. (If you'd like to learn how many crops of alfalfa we grow a year, how long this plant can grow, and how it's harvested, check out this post.)

 My husband is flipping some of the hay to check the moisture content. It has to be quite dry in order to put into bales, otherwise it will get moldy.

Do you notice a darker cloud in the background? It's a smoke column from one of the many wildfires the lightning has started. As we continued with monsoons, we got enough rain that the fires have dwindled--it's wet enough that the little fires are put out, often before they are even noticed.

My husband's allergic to hay, so he likes to shower soon after checking hay. The ragweed is usually really bad this time of year, but the wetness has made it a little better this year.

In the meantime, we're looking for a dry window to get the hay put up while it still has a higher protein content and is worth more. It seems ironic to be wishing for a little dryness out in a place that gets less than seven inches of precipitation a year! Any farmer will tell you, though, timing is everything. Well, they'll probably tell you a lot more than that. Farmers know a lot about the land and the weather!