‘Oh Crap’ Monday: Exploding Hay Bales

Monday is already the crappiest day of the week, so it only makes sense that we make things official. Here’s our latest “oh crap” moment.

So, sometimes hay bales aren’t quite baled correctly. You know the ones — they have two strings of baling twine, but one just isn’t in the right place. Sometimes it’s really close to the edge, sometimes you can’t find it at all, but no matter what the situation, it leaves a lone piece of twine to do the job of two and contain all the hay.

When you first stack the hay, you just know it’s going to be a problem. From the moment you take it off the wagon and load it on the elevator, you send all the positive thoughts or prayers you can to whatever entity believe in that the bale makes it up the elevator and into the stack without a problem. Once that is achieved, the offending bale is out of your mind and you move on… until six months later when you’re throwing down hay to nourish your herd.

You lay hands on the bale, searching for the missing piece of twine. When you toss it from the loft, you hope for a soft landing and an intact bale. Sometimes you get it and sometimes the hay lands and that poor, overworked piece of baling twine finally gives out, resulting in a minor hay explosion all over your barn aisle floor…

Photo by DeAnn Long Sloan

Talk about an oh crap moment… and a lot of clean up. Sigh. It always could have been worse.

Here’s to keeping it together this week.

Go forth and tackle your Monday, Horse Nation.

Have an “Oh Crap” moment to share? Email your photo/video and a brief explanation of what is going down to [email protected]. Instagram users, tag your moments with #OhCrapMonday (your photos need to be set to public or we won’t see them!).