News from the Farm

Why We Needed It In 2013, we found ourselves taking a good, hard look at our balers. We purchased our balers over ten years ago, and they were still in good condition, we needed to make a change. The baler manufacturer didn’t seem to be putting any money towards research and development for small square…

In an ideal world, the weather would be predictable and cooperate with farmers allowing us to always produce excellent quality wheat straw, and for the most part, we do. Our best straw goes to racetracks on the East Coast and in the Southern US. Of course, the weather is out of our control, and sometimes…

At J.D. Russell Hay and Straw, our primary market for hay is racetracks. These tracks house horses that are essentially athletes that demand the best in their diet. The highest quality horse hay is rich green in color, free of mold and dust, and was baled at the ideal maturity and moisture level. Characteristics of…

Around here, we do our best to stay up with the times. One way that we keep up is through our membership in the National Hay Association. John has been a member of the NHA since 1993 and has served on the Board of Directors since 2008. This organization is made up of hay producers,…

Our fluffer/tedder is a machine we are quite proud of and a huge reason we think we make better hay than our competitors. After several years of experimenting with different fluffer designs, we took our prototype to a custom agriculture equipment manufacturer and had them improve the engineering and design a unit that would fluff…

At J.D. Russell Hay and Straw, nothing stands still for long. Hay and straw is made and put in the barns in the summer only to be shipped back out again. Equipment is pulled in the shop, serviced, adjusted, and tweaked to be more efficient in the fields. Even our technology changes as new ideas…