GLASGOW — Clayton Geralds stopped milking dairy cattle and growing tobacco to raise hay 20 years ago. It’s something he’s never regretted doing, he said.

“I love what I do. I’d rather cut hay than anything in the world,” he said.

Geralds, who is the 2009 Kentucky Forage Spokesman, raises 600 acres of hay on his farm in the Priceville community of Hart County; about 450 acres of alfalfa and alfalfa orchard grass and about 150 acres of timothy grass. He shared his farming success story Thursday at the 30th annual Kentucky Alfalfa Conference at the Cave City Convention Center.

“We originally chose alfalfa to take the place of tobacco and then as the alfalfa did better and better it also took the place of dairy. We realized we could not get big enough to make a living in the dairy business,”  he said. “We didn’t have the available acres or the available workforce to get large enough in the dairy business to stay in farming, so we could choose something that could use less acres and still stay in farming.”

He began selling hay to area dairy farmers but then decided to branch out and try selling his product to horse producers in Lexington. Each time he approached a horse producer, he said, “... I heard the same story each time.”

His hay simply wasn’t the quality the horse producers needed.

The fifth horse farm he visited, trying to sell them hay, he was turned down again, but this producer took him to the barn and showed him what he was looking for when purchasing hay.

“I went into his barn and there sitting on the ground was the perfect bale of hay,” he said. “It had leaves on it as big as baseballs. He said he was paying $200 a ton for that hay and would be tickled to have some more.”

So Geralds came back home and began conducting some research to find out what he had to do to produce a higher quality of alfalfa. His hard work paid off. Today he has around 25 to 30 customers for his hay, and advertises hay for sale through the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the Internet. He admitted Thursday he has yet baled hay that has leaves as big as baseballs.

“But I’m trying and I’m going to continue to try,” he said.

Geralds also advertises his hay for sale by word of mouth through his existing customers.

“We have customers have far away as Ocala, Fla., Atlanta, Ga. and Lexington, Ky. Our largest customer is in Atlanta, Ga., and also in Florida,” he said.

Geralds raises the hay with help from his son, Christopher, who is working as a student teacher at Barren County High School in the agriculture department.

Christopher Geralds admits he was relieved when he learned his dad was selling the family’s dairy herd in order to raise hay.

“I remember great relief,” he said, adding the family was not only milking dairy cattle, but raising hay and doing custom silage chopping all at the same time. “With everything we were doing we couldn’t spend the time we needed with the cows and our efficiency had dropped off and we weren’t doing a very good job. I was just glad to see (us) moving in one direction or the other.”

The family’s biggest challenge over the last few years in raising alfalfa has been the weather. It has been both too dry and too wet over the years, but Geralds said he is an optimist and predicts the 2010 hay season to be good.

Geralds was chosen to speak for a number of reasons.

“Number 1, I want the best, and today was the 30th (anniversary) and I wanted the absolute best here. I consider him not only one of the best in Kentucky but one of the best in the U.S.,” said Garry Lacefield, Extension Forage Specialist with the University of Kentucky Research and Education Center in Princeton and event organizer. “Clayton has developed one of the top alfalfa hay farms in the state of Kentucky and I’m very proud of him. We’ve used him not only in state meetings, (but) used him in national meetings as well. He’s always willing to give of his time and talent and share his successes and failures with other people, plus his family is a wonderful family to work with.”

Geralds is featured in the February issue of the Forage magazine. Read the full story on the Geralds family online at www.progressiveforage.com.