It Ain't Disney

It ain't Disney, but it's close.  

The Chapman team loads hay at the 2017 MODA Gathering

Make loose hay with your oxen.  Not exclusively, unless you choose to do so.  Here's why (and, full disclosure: I feed square and round bales more often than loose hay):

1.  The hay is better, although the oxen don't care much and will get fat regardless.

2.  The job is more pleasant than schlepping bales from field to barn.

3.  Round bales seem so post-industrial, and really only look nice on someone else's field, scattered like loaves of bread.

My Daughter and her friend, Abby, stomping hay in 2011.
Zeus and Hermes were 1.5 years old.

4.  Hayloaders are cool. 

Ben Chapman and I load hay at the 2016 MODA Gathering

5.  Track systems in barns are even cooler.

But all of these reasons pale next to the best reason:  Kids love to stomp loose hay.  On the wagon.  In the barn.  

I have a few regrets as a parent, and stopping my kids and their friends from jumping down from the haymow into a pile of loose hay is certainly among them.  

Get a wagon.  Get a kid.  You load, they stomp.  

It ain't Disney, but it's close.