" It take alfalfa about a week in hot drying weather to turn into hay. " That's from this post from Life on a Colorado Farm.
In Broome County, NY alfalfa was not a big crop, wasn't even a small crop that I remember. Now I'm assuming that Colorado's "hot drying weather" has lots less humidity than we had. But the big factor would be rain: our usual pattern would be to get rain pretty regularly over the summer, enough to damage and often to spoil any hay in the field. But the timothy/orchard grass hay which was common didn't take that long to cure. Mow one day, rake the afternoon of the next day, and bale on the third day would be the normal pattern. Leave the hay in the field much longer and the risk of rain would be too great.
So that, plus the difficulty of getting a good stand of alfalfa established, probably explains why there wasn't much alfalfa grown.
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