Featured Customer: The nuns of the Holy Annunciation Monastery in Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania

Our “Featured Customer” is actually a group of customers–the nuns of the Holy Annunciation Monastery in Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania. While dedicated to a life of prayer, these nuns also operate the Carmelites’ Mini Corral where they raise award winning lines of miniature horses. They purchased a drum mower from us last year and Mother Marija had this to say about it: “Just a line to say the mower IS WONDERFUL- and so are my nuns! We have a garage filled with homemade bales, a gazebo full of cut grass for immediate fodder for 52 animals–our Jersey cow gives a gallon more milk with grass–and we have 5 more days of work on other pastures.”

As mentioned above, the nuns previously prepared hay for these horses and their other animals by hand. They decided to mechanize the process with the recent purchase of an Abbriata M60 Mini square baler from Tractor Tools Direct. Pat delivered the baler and took then through a training session in March. The idea with a “hands on” clinic like this is to show customers how the machine works.

In March on a mountain in Pennsylvania, there is no fresh hay to be found, so they broke open some old bales and laid the hay out by hand. Because of that, there was a lot of chaff and the windrows were not properly raked. The sister running the baler had never even seen a hay baler in person, much less baled with one. Under normal circumstances no hay would be left behind. Considering the conditions though, we think she did an admirable job! Here is some footage of their training run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35s0IrpNac4&feature=player_detailpage

Up until now the nuns had provided forage for their 52 animals by hand raking and bundling. They said they could either spend the money on a baler or an undertaker! We think they made a good choice. To learn more about the nuns of the Holy Annunciation and their miniature horses, click here: http://www.carmelitesminicorral.com/