How can we feed our horses when there’s no hay?

‘We’re closed for lunch,’ said the farmer, sitting behind the counter of his farm shop with a scowl on his face, not eating anything.

‘Well then,’ said the builder boyfriend, ‘I’ll come back.’ And the BB went off to have a bite to eat at a nearby caff, where he texted me the news that he had yet to score, but was going to try again later.

There is no hay, or at least there is not enough hay in any given place to make farmers want to sell it.

While the human food supply managed to recover from last year’s panic-buying, animal forage was different, because there really is a limited supply of that, not just an imagined shortage.

Farmers only got one cut of hay last summer because of dry weather, which would have been bad enough. But then horse owners started hoarding hay as part of their Covid panic measures, when there was hardly enough stored up in barns to meet supply anyway.