Haymaking with a twist

I just came across a short video on my Facebook feed. It was originally posted on Instagram here.

The people in the video are making a long, twisted rope of their dried hay which they then fold and twist. It seems like a neat alternative to baling that requires almost no equipment - the man in the foreground is using an L-shaped stick with a little 'barb' in the end to grip and twist the hay.

I found it interesting and thought I'd share.

Fascinating! That Instagram account is well worth a look. Just in the last few posts there are interesting clips of an extraordinarily bee hive and an ingenious butter churn (at least I think that’s what it is). Looks like somewhere in Turkey.

YouTube has a couple of videos about manual hay balers.

That's crazy; just a few days ago I was talking with my dad about balers and while imagining a round baler I had a thought that it seemed odd to me that at least in the early days of balers they never had balers that simply made a large rope that could be wound into bales or on a large spool and rolled around and unwound to feed livestock.

I think that it's important to note that the "twist" method is taking 3 people to "operate" it. This is one reason why I keep encouraging the "people" part of permaculture - we need to pay attention to the nurturing of community, as many excellent, simple technologies were based on humans cooperating on the community level.  

I make the smalles bales imaginable with a milk crate. I just cram the hay in and tie twine around it. It stores nicely in my shed. It's on a tiny scale, but I like feeling that I've baled a little bit of hay.

Ellen Schwindt wrote:I make the smalles bales imaginable with a milk crate. I just cram the hay in and tie twine around it. It stores nicely in my shed. It's on a tiny scale, but I like feeling that I've baled a little bit of hay.

LOL, brings lots of memories.

I did macro scale hay growing up on a working farm. Big round bales.

But decades later I did micro scale hay for guinea pigs in an elementary school classroom. Hand cut, just at the right time. Hand cured, and hand stuffed into a bag for just in time delivery. This was seriously primo stuff, pure timothy. Man, it smelled good. You could powder it and put it in your soup. The piggles loved it -- they would turn up their noses at the overpriced stuff from the pet store.

Regarding the "twist method" -- I think it depends on they type of grass/hay being harvested.

With alfalfa, for example, capturing the dry leafy matter is very important. Those are the most digestable and nutritious parts of the plant.