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Schuster's Ezybale

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25.01.2022 Full steam ahead, cutting the Meadow Hay

22.01.2022 With a bit of rain falling over the next few days, we've parked up the 3 mowers (well, 2.5 mowers...) and will be giving them a check up and any maintenance required!

19.01.2022 "Why do we choose to spread pea straw?" Good evening everyone, Due to the less than ideal 2018 season/harvest in SA, our pea straw stocks are not as high as we would like. We are coming to the end of the 'mulching season', but we have some information which may open up other possibilities and options for garden mulch, if supplies get tight next summer.... When you think of garden mulch, what comes to mind? Pea straw, sugarcane straw, anything else? Also on the subject, why do you spread mulch in your garden? Is it only for moisture conservation, or do you want to add nitrogen to the soil? Earlier this year, we had APAL (Australian Precision Ag Laboratory) based in Adelaide, do some tests for us comparing the amount of nitrogen within pea straw (our most commonly sold garden mulch) with barley straw (normally sold for animal bedding). We thought, if people are buying pea straw mulch for its nitrogen, then exactly how much nitrogen is in it? Also, how much better is it than other straw? Here are the results. Pea Straw - 1.51% nitrogen content Barley Straw - 0.63% nitrogen content So whilst pea straw has 2.5x more nitrogen, in reality - it only has 0.9% more nitrogen overall. Couple other points. - In testing at our home garden, we did find that barley straw did not break down as quickly as pea straw. - Pea straw, due to the tangled nature of the vine, can be more difficult to spread out in a garden bed, barley straw is much easier to spread. - Personal preference, barley straw just looks nicer ;)

17.01.2022 Meadow hay season update. Our paddock of "Safeguard" Ryegrass (that's the variety name, like Bob, Jim or Mary) is growing exceptionally well at the moment. We've only had 290mm of rain for the year, but it's fallen at the perfect time. This crop is still a few weeks away from cutting though. With 146 hectares or 360 acres of meadow hay in this year, we're looking forward to favourable weather conditions to ensure top quality!

15.01.2022 Hi folks, We thought we'd share this with you - A bit of a comparison of our oaten hay in 2018 versus our oaten hay in 2019. (The variety is Mulgara in both instances. 2018 crop was sown dry on 11/5/2018. 2019 crop was sown dry on 30/4/2019)... A bit of fodder / food for thought. At the end of September last year, we shared a few photos of our oaten hay crops at Freeling which were (if we're honest) terrible...courtesy of dry conditions and poorly timed rainfall events. At the time of cutting, our oaten hay was only 65cm tall (First picture) and for the whole year (Jan.1 until date of cutting Sept.28), they'd had 261mm of rain. Well, after today's crop tour, we present you with this years oaten hay (second picture). It's currently standing at 75cm tall...and we've still got another 7-8 weeks of growing to go. How much rainfall has it had to date (Jan.1 - Jul.29)? 140mm So this years oaten hay has not only eclipsed last years crop in terms of height and bulk...but it's done it on about half the amount of rainfall...with plenty more growing to go. Call us odd, getting excited about plants growing...but yes, we think that's pretty incredible. We're definitely not out of the woods yet, we've still got August and September to get through and the long term rainfall forecast from the Weather Bureau does not fill us with joy. But it does go to show, if the rain falls at the right times, it doesn't take much water to grow a crop! So this is only a quick update, we'll have a more thorough update on the hay situation next week!

14.01.2022 Good morning everyone, This isn’t exactly a post we envisaged ourselves ever writing, but it is the reality of the current situation. From the beginning of April, we have not been and will not be taking on any new customers private customers, agistment centres, fodder stores or distribution centres. We have enough hay set aside only for those customers who have been buying from us on a consistent basis for the past 2 years.... As you know, from our previous posts, the hay yields last year were not great, about 35-40% of what we expected. This coupled with dry conditions around Australia has meant there has been a huge pressure on hay supplies, both our own and other hay producers. Using oaten hay as an example - in a normal hay year (the 12 months from October to October), we would set aside and expect to process around 1,000 of these ‘big square’ bales (pictured below) into EzyBales.but in the 5 months between October ‘18 to February ’19, we have processed 1,170 oaten hay bales. Thankfully last year we set aside more hay than normal for EzyBale, but we never expected a scenario like we’re seeing now, hence the action we're taking. We just hope & pray that soon (VERY SOON) there is some form of significant rainfall to start this 2019 season off, so we can get planting this year’s crop and the whole hay market can return to normalwhere demand and supply are in equal measure! Thanks for your understanding.

13.01.2022 Good evening folks, A quick update on the hay season, but of a different kind. We'll start by using the example of soft drink (Could use beer...but we'll use soft drink). When you buy soft drink, you're buying a liquid, however that liquid comes in a multitude of different forms - cans, 2L bottles, 600ml bottles, lots of different packages.... It's the drink that you're buying, but people have different preferences - some like cans, others like bottles. The same occurs with hay. If you're going to buy hay for your horse, sheep, cow, goat etc, you want the best quality hay you can get, but you may have different preferences for round bales, little squares, compact bales etc. Here on our farm, we strive to produce the best quality hay we possibly can to the Australian market, it's what your animals deserve. We also recognize that customers have different preferences for the form/packaging that hay takes, big square bales, round bales etc. In the last few years, we've had requests from customers along the lines of 'our animal(s) love your hay, but I do like the old type of small square bale" So this year, we've decided to add another piece of machinery or two to the fleet and produce our top quality hay in the standard small square bales - to 'complete the set' (Big square bales, small square bales, Ezybales/compact small squares). These will soon be available through the SA stores we already supply, in the form of 'Bale Baron' packs of 21 bales. We have some other surprises in the works which will also enable us to easily deliver to agistment centres around SA too...so watch this space. In the mean time, we've put up a few photos of the hay season thus far :)

12.01.2022 The lads at the processing shed certainly had a productive day on lucerne today! Great looking hay!

12.01.2022 Into the oaten hay! The oats are just flowering now - so the optimal time to cut!

09.01.2022 Tempting the rain gods by cutting the first few laps of our meadow hay - Only cutting a little bit though Once this next rain event passes, we'll be right into it!

09.01.2022 2019 Sunlamb wheaten hay, poking out the ground to say hello. Start growing little one! There are horses out there who need you! ;)

08.01.2022 Hay fever season hath begun! More comprehensive update coming tomorrow :)

04.01.2022 Mid hay season update Hello everyone, we’ve passed the halfway point of our hay season here at Freeling. Everything that we want to cut has been cut and we’re about halfway through raking and baling. There have been a few late nights/early mornings as we attempt to bale the hay in optimum conditions (65-75% humidity) and things are progressing nicely. In our previous update, we gave the example of our oaten hay crop only being ~65cm tall when it would normally be around 150cm... tall, we shared the view that final hay yields would be between 30-50% of a normal year..well. Now that we’ve baled all of our meadow hay and about 2/3 of our wheaten hay, we can give you a comparison of this year’s yields versus last year’s yields instead of tons per hectare which is difficult to visualize, we’ll explain in small square bales per hectare (25kg each). Meadow Hay Due to the low rainfall this year (2018), hay yield is equivalent to 120 small bales per hectare. Last year, 2017, hay yield was equivalent to 390 small bales per hectare. Wheaten Hay This year’s yield, equivalent to 170 small bales per hectare. Last year’s yield was equivalent to 400 small bales per hectare. Oaten Hay - As we have only baled a small portion of our oaten hay, it’s impossible to say exactly what it will yield. We should know in about 10 days once we’ve finished baling. A few more notes - Looking on the positive side, whilst the quantity is not great, quality is fantastic, as seen in photos. - We have not actually cut all of our wheaten hay (as seen in photos), we have left about 20 hectares to go to seed. Beardless/awnless wheat seed is going to be near impossible to source for next year’s crop; hence we have decided to leave the healthiest portion of our crops for grain. - We at EzyBale pride ourselves on having enough hay for to meet our customers’ needs for the full 12 months of the year. This year we will have a strain on the supply of meadow hay and wheaten hay, as such we will be reducing the quantity of hay we send outside of South Australia. - We also pride ourselves on only supplying hay in small bales which we have grown ourselves; this gives us an ability to guarantee quality right up until point of sale. Due to the lower yields on our own farm, we may find ourselves in a position where we will be buying hay in from other farmers, so we can have sufficient stock to process. If this happens, rest assured we will only be purchasing hay which meets our strict standards for cleanliness, moisture and quality. We’ll have another update at the end of hay season. Thanks.

03.01.2022 Plenty of peastraw going out before Christmas/New Year period. Must be a lot of people planning to tackle the garden before the real summer weather kicks in! Gotta get the new seasons peastraw out quickly! (Video sped up... would be nice if it was this quick though )

01.01.2022 Meadow hay update :( Hi everyone, we've got some news on the meadow hay front....There's the good, the bad and the ugly news. The good news is that all of this year's meadow hay has been planted, we finished about 10 days ago. As you can see, it has jumped out of the ground and is growing well.... The bad news is this crop is about 4 or 5 months from being cut and baled, ready to sell. And the ugly news. Due to unprecedented demand in the last 4 weeks, (Despite rationing, we have been selling about a months normal quantity of meadow hay each week) we are now officially out of meadow hay.... (The pallet on the forklift was the final one we made.) The last pallets have left our processing shed and are now sitting in fodder stores.