there is a website www.barrelhorseworld.com they have a hay forum and a general forum called Barrel talk.

i would go on there and post that you are looking for Straw bales in the okc area and you should be set up..

lots of oklahoma girls on there that use straw and hay 24/7 if you were up in NE oklahoma i could help you out.

I had a huge pain finding it in Tulsa last year. I wound up paying about $7 per bale at Farmer's Feed in Sapulpa. 20 minute drive each way, and I could only fit four bales per trip in my minivan. I think I wound up making 6 or 7 trips and spending a small fortune. The hay forum is good to know about.

Jo

In the summer they have straw at one feed store in Grove, and even at Lowes but it is always expensive. I didn't buy enough last year and could use a couple of bales right now for my chickens, but can't find any. Next year I will prepare better and keep more for winter.

i know a wonderful guy around grove that you could get great quality from BUT he is in Grove.. but if you had a trailer you could get alot and have it for a while.. a few years if you stored it properly..

it is great quality straw.. and he can get good hay also..

Have you checked Craigslist? I have never placed an add on craigslist but read it almost every day.

I got two large round bales free. It was old hay and said nobody would buy it (but I would have). I had rather have old hay rather than new hay.

Larry

I use Cross Brand Feeds over on N. Bryant near NE 63rd St. It's a stone's throw from Lake Aluma and Remington Park--in fact, they mostly supply the Remington Park trade. Another landmark is across the street--it's one of Braum's corporate offices and distribution centers. It has easy I-35 on and off access.

They will deliver, and they have clean straw without any seeds or weeds in it. Their prices seem competitive, too. And you know you won't get tricked and find your straw riddled with weeds.

Below is a Google link to a map, their address and phone number.

Hope that helps.

--Robert

Here is a link that might be useful: Cross Brand Feeds

Be careful getting hay, old or new. It may have herbicide residue. I lost 100 tomato plants,100ft of greenbeans,all my eggplant and close to 100 pepper plants last year due to residual herbicide in hay.

I know the hay was 2 yr old, but i had forgot about appling grazon P+D to the field. I did'nt get a plant sample but did send pictures to OSU. first thing everyone said was herbicide damage when they seen the pictures.

I thought it looked like herbicide or curly top damage.the hay stored in a barn and out of the weather.

sooner grand mom. the Noel feed store has Straw also and it is cheaper than grove... just a thought ..

email me arkaity82@yahoo.com

busy1, have you tried to plant in that ground again?

The hay I got is low quality hay with weeds. I may be much better off if I just use it in a test spot and watch to see what happens. The hay has set in the weather for two years.

I will start some extra tomato plants and plant them in a new area and watch for herbicide signs.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Larry

There's a huge difference between hay and straw. Hay still has seed heads on it and is composed of (usually) mixed grasses. It is used as feed for ungulates. Straw, which is used for mulch and bedding, is the stem left over after harvesting the grain heads, as what happens when harvesting wheat. It has little or no nutritive value for horses and ruminants.

Stay away from hay. Use only straw.

OK, I was thinking that hay and straw were pretty much one in the same. Nice to know it is not. I don't like the idea of herbicides, so I will defiantly go with straw.

Cross brand feeds are by my house, so I will check them out for sure.

Thanks everyone!

I wonder if they would have some down around the Stockyards?

I only need like a couple of bales for now anyway. The small rectangular bales, not those huge round ones.

Susan

OH, that is good idea!

Ezzirah,

Straw is sprayed with herbicides too. All it takes is a very minute amount of herbicide residue (perhaps as small as one part per billion) on hay, straw, in animal manure from animals that ate the contaminated hay, or compost made from contaminated ingredients to contaminate your soil. Contaminated soil will vary in how long it remains barren and for most gardeners it seems like it takes at least 3 or 4 years before they can grow anything in the garden again other than grasses or grains. The 3 to 4 years of "down time" that most people see is a much longer period than the manufacturer says their research indicates.

I've linked a permaculture website that addresses herbicide contamination and the writer shows some of their own plants in soil he or she was testing for contamination, and further down the page describes how the contamination issue affected their plants.

The only way to know for sure you have non-contaminated hay or straw is to get it directly from the person who grew it and make sure that it was not sprayed with any of the herbicides known to persist for long periods of time. I only get hay from people I know do not ever, ever, ever spray their fields and even then you run the risk that their next-door neighbor could have sprayed this herbicide and it could have drifted into non-sprayed area.

When I buy hay from a feed store, I only buy alfalfa hay and I don't buy straw because the local suppliers cannot tell me if it was sprayed or not. Your local feed store or hay broker may or may not know if their hay or straw was sprayed. Our local feed store sometimes knows and sometimes has no idea. All the herbicides that persist in hay, straw, manure, compost and soil are sprayed to kill broad-leaved weeds in grass and grain crops, along road, railroad and utility line right-of-ways, and even on golf courses. Since alfalfa is not a grass or grain (it is a legume), it cannot be sprayed with those herbicides, so there is not a deadly herbicide residue issue with it.

I used to bring in lots of mulch and soil amendments from outside our property, whether they were locally-grown hay or bagged products from a store, but almost everything I use now come from our own property because that's the only way I have of knowing I'm not contaminating my soil with herbicide residue. It takes me so much more time to mow and collect grass clippings to use as mulch than it takes to go to the feed store and buy bales of hay, but at least this way I know I'm not bringing contaminated materials onto our property. Just one bale of contaminated straw or hay or one bag of contaminated manure or compost could destroy your ability to raise non-grass, non-grain crops for years.

Everyone who has this happen to them always is shocked and has that "I didn't think this ever would happen to me" attitude, and I understand that, but sadly it has happened to them and it continues to happen. In a very odd and ironic twist, the contaminated compost, manure and mulch issue has hit organic gardeners especially hard despite their efforts to avoid chemicals in the garden. That's because it tends to be organic gardeners who are adding compost and manure to their garden beds, and using hay or straw for mulch. For organic growers who are "certified organic", their certification can be yanked after they've gone to great effort and expense to get it in the first place.

The herbicide contamination issue is largely ignored by the media and mostly only discussed after many gardens in one area are wiped out by herbicide contamination. I think that's because it first showed up in the beds of organic gardeners back in the early 2000s when organic gardening was not as popular or as widespread as it is now and organic gardeners still were thought of as a fringe element.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Herbicide Contamination

The herbicide issue is one reason I like getting shredded leaves from my uncle, I know it wont have anything in it except grass seed and a few rocks. He is getting old enough that vacuuming up the leaves is a lot of work and he has too much pride to let me do it for him, but I'd love to do it just for the leaves. I have a 77"x12' trailer with 2' sides and it will not hold all of his shredded leaves. Last year I got two loads.

Larry

I feed only alfalfa to my horses and use their manure on the garden. My mulch is made from stuff shredded from my yard trimmings so that I know it's clean, or alfalfa hay.
Your story is really scary Dawn!

I usually buy those bales that places sell for Halloween, and let them sit until the spring, through all of our snow, sleet, rain, whatever. In the spring, because it's usually wet on the interior of the bale, I pull it apart and set the portions out in the sun on my sidewalk to dry before I apply it to my plants. If any weeds or grains sprout or have sprouted, I just pull them out from the pieces I've put out in the sun. I do this over a period of a couple of weeks or more. Then, I apply it as mulch. Used it many times, have purchased it from various vendors, and applied it last year to my tomatos in containers, and have had not one weed come up or any resulting issues that I would attribute to pesticides. That may be more than what most people want to do, but it has worked for me without any problems. I believe in simplifying almost everything if I can and banishing the worry to a dark corner somewhere since it's not usually of any help otherwise. I'm too old and I become too bumfuddled worrying about every little thing that "might" happen. I love that phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and try to apply that in any way I can.

Susan