HAY BALE

This is one of the rare rows where you are the seller. No job villager wants a hay bale at any tier, but the Wandering Trader does: he pays 1 emerald each, then closes that offer for good once he has taken his fill for the visit.

A hay bale is wheat pressed down into a single storable block, which does two jobs at once: it keeps a barn or silo from turning into a wall of loose wheat stacks, and it feeds horses and llamas, useful if you are taming or breeding either. Selling one to the trader means giving up both of those uses for an emerald instead, which only makes sense once you have more baled wheat than a stable actually needs.

It cuts back apart the way it was made, too: a hay bale broken at a crafting table returns to loose wheat, so nothing is permanently lost by baling surplus grain before deciding whether to feed it, build with it, or sell it off.

The Wandering Trader buys Hay Bale, paying 1 emerald each before the offer locks for the rest of his visit. It is one of only six goods he purchases at all, and any single trader carries two of those six, chosen at random when he spawns.

No working villager profession lists hay bale in its trade table on either side, buying or selling, so the trader is the entire market for it, not just the convenient part of one.

The Wandering Trader is not part of any village and keeps no workstation. He walks in wherever you happen to be playing, two leashed llamas behind him, stays for a while, and eventually leaves whether or not a trade happened. There is nothing to place and nothing to break to influence what he does or does not want to buy.

Hay bale runs the opposite way from most of this site's trades: you hand it over, and he hands emeralds back, paying 1 emerald each until the offer runs out for good on that visit.

Whether he wants hay bale at all is decided at spawn, since he only offers two of his six possible purchases per encounter. If this happens to be one of them and you plan on selling more later, tag him with a name: a named mob does not despawn, turning a passing trader into a standing buyer you can return to.

Feed the stable before you sell to the trader. A hay bale converts to only a single emerald, while the same block spent on a horse or llama is what actually breeds or tames one, and neither of those is something emeralds buy directly elsewhere on this site.

Selling only makes sense once wheat is genuinely piling up faster than a farm can use it, the way a large automated field tends to run. Bale the overflow, keep enough loose wheat and hay around for animals and bread, and sell what is left over rather than baling everything the moment it is harvested.

Remember the offer locks after a handful of trades and never comes back on that trader, so selling a whole surplus in one visit usually means finding more than one Wandering Trader over time rather than emptying a barn on the first one you meet.

A hay bale is nine wheat squeezed into one block and it comes apart into nine again whenever you want, which makes it a storage block rather than a building material that happens to be yellow. A chest of bales holds nine chests of wheat.

It also breaks a fall. Landing on hay cancels most of the damage, which is why it sits at the bottom of shafts and under jump towers in half the worlds ever built.

Horses eat it, and it is the fastest way to heal and grow one, since a bale counts as a full meal rather than a mouthful. Llamas take it too.

A Hay Bale is 9 Wheat pressed together, so the 2 bales the wandering trader buys on a visit hold 18 Wheat between them. The Farmer takes his Wheat loose, 20 per emerald, and keeps buying long after the trader has wandered off. Both are fed by the same field: How to Build a Wheat Farm in Minecraft.