Making Hay in a Changing Climate
How an old family farm works in a new world
Matt Hornbrooks’ mornings at Landslide Farm start at 5:30 a.m. when he begins tossing hay down from the loft into the horse’s stalls. Some days he moves a large round bale of hay with the tractor and places it in a round green steel horse feeder outside.
Matt Hornbrook, a farmer in his late thirties, has been farming since he was able to walk. Matt is always working on the farm with his broken in red Landslide Farm hat and his tan Carhartt jacket and work pants.
“Farming is not for the faint of the heart,” said Matt. “It’s early morning, late night and thankless gruelling hours.”
The day always begins with hay. The future of Landslide Farm is tied to a secure supply of hay, which is the primary food source for their horses, sheep, goats and cows.
The majority of Landslide Farm’s income is from dairy cows. They also sell horses and goats. “We try to follow the markets as much as we can,” said Brenda Hornbrook, Matt’s wife. “Improving the quality of stock has made it possible to raise our prices.”
Farmers make hay when the sun shines, so the saying goes, but they need rain before the sunshine. Prolonged summer droughts in recent years have caused widespread hay shortages in eastern Canada and down the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Farming has always been long days and hard work, but now farmers are dealing with the uncertainty of a changing climate. With the hot weather and lack of rain these past few summers, many farmers in the Maritimes struggled to secure a supply of hay. Last year, the Hornbrooks decided they needed fewer mouths to feed.
“We’ve been following the trends and the hay shortage has been significant and the cost of hay, so we had sold our small beef herd last year and it really helped out with this year,” said Brenda.
Brenda is also in her late thirties, she is often found doing her two favourite things, cooking and baking. But sometimes she will tie her short blonde hair up, throw on her red Hunter boots and help out in the barn.
Matt and Brenda Hornbrook farm over 800 acres with their family in Sussex, N.B. Landslide Farm has been running since 1867. Matt is the sixth generation.
Matt was raised as a farmer. He has been at his father’s side working on the farm for as long as he can remember. After graduating from high school, he became a full-time worker on the farm with his father, Ronnie Hornbrook.
Three families live on the farm. Nancy and Ronnie, Matt’s parents; Matt, Brenda and their son Alex; and Andrew, Matt’s nephew who lives with his wife Cora. They all work together.
There is a dairy barn and a horse barn on the farm, along with farming equipment to cut hay and corn.
After feeding the horses, Matt leaves the big red barn and walks three minutes down the road to the dairy barn where Matt, his parents, and his nephew Andrew work. Matt milks the calves with Andrew. There are around 70 cows to milk, which takes an hour and a half. Six milking units are located in the cow barn. The Hornbrooks are still old school and they tie the cows in a stall and milk them with a pipeline that transfers the milk from the cows to a cooling and storage bulk tank.
Andrew starts by washing the cow’s teats and Matt carries the milkers to each cow. Matt’s parents feed the calves 16 per cent dairy ration pellets which contain proteins, vitamins and minerals to promote the best milk production. Andrew then feeds the cows silage, a type of hay that has sugars and protein in it, while Matt cleans up after milking. Matt hoses down the stalls and beds the cattle with shavings they buy from the local mill.
Around 8 a.m. everyone heads back to their own homes to eat breakfast, usually bacon and eggs that come fresh from the farm, then it’s back to work.
Until supper time they are working with the pigs, sheep, goats and cows. They feed the sheep and goats hay while the pigs get hog grower pellets.
In the spring, there are added chores. Matt is in the sheep barn helping to lamb and, in the horse barn, helping with foaling. During lambing season, which is usually in March, Matt checks on the sheep throughout the day to make sure things are going smoothly. When he notices the sheep are not eating or appear to be stiff, he knows the lamb is coming, and he assists the delivery of the lamb. Sometimes, there are two born. They have 30 ewes.
In the spring, they are fixing fences and planting crops. In fall and winter, they are ploughing, turning the topsoil over to bring fresh nutrients to the surface in preparation for planting in the spring. A manure spreader is then attached to the tractor to spread manure on the fields to fertilize the ground in spring. Some days are reserved for cutting firewood to keep the house warm with their wood stove.
They have supper most days at 5 p.m. and then head back out to the dairy barn to feed and milk the cows again. They then work with their horses, either training them for the horse shows or hauling wood and if they aren’t doing that, they would be haying or making silage.
When the sun shines in the summer, Matt connects a mower to his tractor that cuts the hay in the fields. He then attaches a large implement that is called a rake to the tractor that pulls the cut hay into rows. He then attaches the baler to the tractor which makes square or round bales of hay. Square bales are small and usually used to feed the horses in the barn while the large round bales are used in the pasture.
“We were very fortunate this year with our hay crop,” said Brenda. The Hornbrooks had their first cut of hay a week earlier than usual. “The weather was good, so we wanted to take advantage of that,” said Matt. “The first cut was light, but with some rain that came in July, the second cut was better.”
Even though the Hornbrooks were prepared and fortunate, the summer of 2020 was the driest summer that they can recall. Because of this, they had to buy hay because they are not growing as much as they usually do.
They will make it through the winter, and next season they will once again be watching the weather, the one variable at Landslide that hard work and long hours can’t overcome.
Jayme Humprey is a third-year journalism student at St. Thomas University. After taking one journalism class her first year, she quickly fell in love. She loves to write but has a passion for film. Her spare time consists of coaching a ringette team and helping out with a kindergarten class. This story was written for the class, The Power of Narrative.
