No Strings Attached

That winter he lost three cows to milk fever. Twisted abomasums added to the problems in his herd. It was not what he had hoped farming would be. He longed for a change. "I was looking for something I could produce and market myself, something with no government support or involvement."

Someone suggested that hay for the horse market met that criteria. The next spring he planted 30 acres of an alfalfa, timothy, clover mix. "I thought it was pretty good hay," he said. "I sent two semi-loads to a horse farm, and they both came back, not good enough."

"She's my baler driver," Coulton says of his wife, Debra.

Not easily discouraged, Coulton doubled his hay acreage, then more than doubled it again the following year, going to nearly 140 acres. With his old bank barn filled to capacity with hay bales, the floor settled and the lower level of the barn had to be renovated. One night in the fall of '94 he awoke about 2 a.m. to see an eerie orange-red reflection on the wall. The newly strengthened barn was in flames. That night he lost 22,000 bales of hay and 500 pigs, including 60 sows.

Hay Gets The Nod

"A year's work went up in flames that night," he said. "But we did have insurance on about 80 percent of the loss." After the fire, he and Debra took time to make a decision they would live with for a long time. From now on it would have to be either all hay or all contract hogs. "We wanted to be independent," Coulton said, "so we chose hay."

On the ashes of the old barn a new hay shed was built for the '95 growing season and a pull-type automatic bale wagon added to his line of equipment. Corn prices went up that year, and other farmers increased their corn acreage while Coulton grew more hay than ever. During the next four years he grew all the hay he could and marketed it all through brokers.

"I was making decent money, but I became inquisitive when I discovered the truckers hauling hay to Florida were making an excessive amount on a load of 550 bales. I got to thinking, "Why should I let them make all that profit on my crop?" Before long Coulton was on a plane to Florida. He had but one contact in horse country and carried with him sample slices of his best hay. In Florida he rented a car and went to horse farms and feed stores, showed them his hay, and said customer service would be the basis of his business.

An automatic bale wagon stacks a load in Coulton's big 70 by 175-foot barn.

Looking back he says it was an easy sell. The shipper takes care of quality, and as long as the customers like it they keep buying it. It wasn't long before nearly all of his top quality hay, about 42,000 bales, was being sold directly to buyers in Florida.

A pull-type automatic bale wagon heads back to the barn with a full load.

A huge steel hay storage barn has been erected on the site of his two former barns. It measures 70 by 175 feet and is 30 feet high in the center. He has added a self-propelled bale wagon to go with the pull-type he already had. In good weather bales can now be shuttled into that barn at the rate of 6,000 a day. Last year Coulton increased his hay land to 635 acres. He and his brother-in-law Charles Robinson bought out the broker who was taking his second-quality bales. They now operate that part of the hay business as equal partners.

He now puts up over 75,000 bales of hay a year, each weighing about 70 pounds. His hay moves to Florida in produce trucks, providing two-way hauling for a carrier that brings citrus back to Canada.

He has even added his own marketing enticement for those distant customers. At the back of each load of hay sent to Florida he adds sample bales of what he still has to sell. In horse country where owners want only the best quality hay for their pampered steeds, those samples are the only salesmen Richard Coulton needs.

Early morning cutting of high-quality alfalfa-Timothy hay.