Why one of Hancock County’s last hay farmers keeps going

Why one of Hancock County’s last hay farmers keeps going

Ben Gifford has been making hay since he was a young teenager in the 1970s. Over the years, he’s honed the four-step process of cutting hay, spreading it to dry, raking it together into windrows and then baling it with a tractor. He’s likely one of the last people haying for landowners on the Blue Hill peninsula, where he manages and harvests fields in exchange for several thousand bales to sell for local farmers and homesteaders to feed their a…