“When it’s go time, it’s all hands on deck,” said Joe Zaborney. “It’s a family operation. Longtime friends and neighbors all help when needed.”

Joe and his son, John, work together on Zaborney Farms to make premium hay. The farm has a Posen address, but is located in Maple Ridge, Posen and Krakow townships.

The information for this article is the product of us being asked to write about our hay and what we do to make it. We got together to tell you a little bit about our operation.

On the outside, it’s the harvesting and hauling of the hay that is most obvious. However, the process of producing great hay actually starts long before with the field preparation and planting.

Courtesy Photo Joe Zaborney stands on top of a hay customer's load on a pickup truck.

Hay is a great crop that always provides a cover for the soil, preventing erosion. We seed the hay with oats, harvesting the oats for grain and baling the remaining oat stalks into straw. The next year, the field will be ready for production. Once a hay field is in production it can last several years to even decades with proper fertilization. New seeding hay starts out with very heavy alfalfa and gets grassier with time. Some customers want more alfalfa and some want more grass, so it works out well. We spread fertilizer in the spring to shoot for about four tons of dry hay per acre (145 small square bales per acre over two cuttings per acre). On a good year this can be more with timely rain and on a bad year it can be substantially less.

We usually get two cuttings a year from our fields — producing about four tons of hay per acre. A larger horse can eat about 20 to 30 pounds of hay a day or 1.5 acres of good yielding hay a year.

Zaborney Farms premium hay is composed of alfalfa and mixed grass. But, it’s what’s done with the plants that is the difference between premium hay and good hay. Once cut, it must be cured and dried to 15% or less moisture and be small stem, fine, soft and green with lots of leaves. Our biggest challenge in the process is the weather. You need a three-day, dry and low humidity window to make nicely cured, dry hay. Rain on hay that is nearly dry could be detrimental to the quality. Operating costs of hay farming are high and heavily dependent on the weather.

Pest problems in the recent year have included alfalfa weevils, a pest that eats the alfalfa leaves — which is the most nutritious part of the plant. There is not much you can do besides harvesting early before they destroy the crop. Deer do pose a problem, but often leave when the soy beans come up in neighboring fields, as they prefer beans.

How is hay made? Over a three- to four-day period the following steps take place:

Courtesy Photo John and Joe Zaborney stand in front of a John Deere 4995 Discbine.

1. The alfalfa and grasses are cut using a self-propelled discbine which has full contact condition rollers to break up hay stems so it dries quicker.

2. Hay is then scattered/teddered to speed up drying process.

3. Once it is dry, the hay is then raked into windrows.

4. Hay is then baled with a small square baler, and bales are dropped on the ground.

5. After it is baled, it is gathered and packed into 21 square bale bundles with a machine called a Bale Baron and dropped on the ground.

Courtesy Photo Joe Zaborney and granddaughter Harper Zaborney check the hay to see if it’s ready to rake and bale.

6. Bundles are picked up from the field using loader tractors, wagons and trailers.

This final step is equally as important as all the rest; the hay is stored in a well-ventilated barn until it is sold. Our hay customers are people with equine, beef or dairy animals.

Since its beginning in 1998, Zaborney Farm has come a long way. What started as a means to feed a horse owned by Sally Zaborney, Joe’s wife, has grown from owning 80 acres and a tractor, to today’s operation of farming over 600 acres of hay with several more pieces of equipment. We still have one horse but in 2020 we acquired three head of beef cattle. We now have about 30 head of beef cattle and the herd continues to grow. Beef cattle clean up our lesser quality hay we cannot sell as premium hay for our horse customers. We hope to continue producing premium quality hay for years to come, sharing our love for farming with the next generation.

Courtesy Photo John Zaborney and daughter Harper Zaborney start the 2025 hay season.

Courtesy Photo John Zaborney stacks bundles of hay in the barn with a John Deere 5100e.

Courtesy Photo A John Deere hooked to a 20-foot hay wagon hauls hay bales to the barn.

Zaborney Farms