Making hay when the sun shines

Those lucky enough to love in tropical areas, can let their livestock graze all year long, but most Scarterrans live in temperate biome, so they have to gather provisions for winter.
Livestock needs to eat too most horses, cattle, and other livestock eat mostly hay over the winter.
The main haymaking season is, unsuprisingly, within the month of Hayseed, but one cannot simply pick any day in the month. The haymakers need at least a few consecutive days of warm dry weather for best results. It is usually up to the village elders and/or Stewards of the Gift to make the call when to start gathering hay in earnest, despite the fact that the goddess Nami controls the weather, Nami's Rovers rarely get involved in making calls about what the weather will be not wanting to make blasphemous presumptions about what the Lady of Winds will or will not do.

A good hay crop means a community can support more livestock through the winter. A poor hay crop means livestock need to be culled severely but hopefully not too severely that they cannot rebound their livestock population later. The last month of autumn is called "the month of Blooding" for a reason.

goat eating hay by Misha Korobeinikov

Sometimes hayfields are owned outright by the nobility who tightly control when the field is harvested and by whom. Othertimes the nobility is more laisez faire and will just tell their peasants (harvest the hay!). Some lucky yeomen farmers own their own hayfields.
Regardless of who owns it, the process of harvesting it is pretty much the same. Hay comes from grassy fields and these fields are left alone most of the year except when the farmers visit to check for any plants toxic for livestock and attempt to remove them. Any non-toxic plant, even if it's not grass just becomes and "flavoring herb" in the hay.
Certain land is good for hay production and other land is subpar. Also, random factors such as the weather tend to affect hay crops. Scarterran agricultural measurements, like many medieval agricultural measurements are not very exact and scientific.
An acre of hayfield is considered a parcel land enough for one man to harvest in one day. So a five acre field of hay is either going to take one man five days to work, or five men one day to work.

"It doesn't matter how strong man is, if his scythe isn't sharpened properly, he's not going get to an acre finished in one day.
-Havro, Fumayan peasant farmer

This also leads to the somewhat disparaging colloquial measurement of "a gnome acre" being what a gnome man can work in a day. Among gnome agricultural communities they tend to use the term "our acres" instead.

Manufacturing

The Scarterran Famer's Calendar, days and months has an entire month named Hayseed and for good reason. This is when most Scarterran harvest most of the hay need for the year.
In a village or estate, almost every able bodied man, woman, and child pitches.
The men normally line up and chop down hay grass in roughly a straight line. Behind them are a line of women, gathering what they cut and shaking them out while a third line of children behind them to tidy up.
Cut grass is gathered up and dried out for four to six days before being stacked and baled for long term storage. The hay can be ruined if it gets too wet, hence why hay needs to be made when the sun shines.

Access & Availability

Near universal