Month: June 2024

The dreaded hay pickup

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Every year I am confronted with the same problem. They hay, once baled needs to get into the barn. The bales are light but plentiful so they do not lend themselves to mechanical pickup. Therefore, it must be done manually. Ideally, you would have a driver, a stacker on the flatbed and two people walking along and dumping bales on the flatbed. I never have this many people. I have done it alone, with two people, three people and four. Four is my favorite but three is what I shoot for most years. The Progeny and Gingerman agreed to help me on Saturday. We have an “atmospheric river“ coming on Sunday so I wanted to pickup as much baled hay as possible and get it into the barn before then. Meathead was driving and Gingerman and I would load and stack, once at the barn she would count and we would unload and stack in the barn.

We ended up pulling five loads of hay out of the fields. The last load has about 65 bales on it and we just parked it in the machine shed. We are going to save that for Mr Rainman to unload as he was otherwise occupied this weekend and we did not want him to miss out on the fun. We ended up with aching bodies and torn blisters. I had three torn blisters between my fingers from the hay hooks. I just worked the Gingerman into the ground. He stated that his normal physical conditioning the last several years has been bringing a cheeseburger to his mouth. He was still able to throw bales overhead so we could stack them.

We both alternated water and Gatorade but that evening I got a horrible cramp in my lower thigh. Usually, I drink some liquid IV to keep the cramps away. I ended up having to drink it before bedtime so I didn’t get woken up by a horrific cramp. I did not get a cramp in the middle of the night.

On our last trip back to the house we heard coyotes and spotted a den across the field. There are a few holes in the rock bluff that occasionally the coyotes use for dens. We did not have a den last year when we lost all the sheep. We came back with two rifles and the Gingerman ended up killing three coyotes, I got none! Wife says I may need to start practicing. I will have to get the reloader up and running before I can do that. There are still two coyotes left. Gingerman also shot a raccoon the night before down at the Mother-in-law’s house. So for 2024 Farm 4, Predators 0.

We got all of the hay bales picked up that I wanted to from the field. We left about 60 bales but they are filled with about half cheatgrass. We will pick those up and toss onto the burn pile if I cannot give them away. I don’t want the cheat grass seed to sit out in the field.

I went out Sunday morning and raked all the loose hay towards the outer edge of the field. The animals can eat at the piles later and the piles will keep the cheat grass at bay. The cheat grass is on the outer edges of the field. I wanted to clear the field as we are supposed to get 1/4-1/2” of rain Sunday-Monday. I am hopeful that the grass will take off and I may be able to get a second cutting. Who knows, we will cut again on Wednesday or Thursday morning. I would like to do it on Wednesday. But the sickle bar mower is missing two teeth and now that I have the parts I will need to fix that this week. Haying is just keeping after it till its done, it never ends during the duration.

Haying by moonlight

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Mr Rainman came out this week on Tuesday and turned the cut grass from field one so I could have the pleasure of baling it all. I had a neighbor call me and ask about cutting their field. I ended up just going over and cutting it and then raked it after work and then baled it after work. It is beautiful grass hay. I was able to get about 1.6 tons off of their 3 acres. I had to work fast to get it all done before the sun went down as the external lights on my John Deere are dead. It also gets cold once the sun goes down. I was at the neighbors finishing up and it started to get cold and I realized my vest was no longer on the back of my seat. I happened to look over and spotted by vest inside a bale of hay! I had to cut the bale open and unroll it to get my vest out. Surprisingly, the jacket was just dirtier than normal, it did not have any tears in it.

I then ended up staying up till midnight on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night trying to get all of the hay baled from field one that we had cut. I was supposed to only cut half the field but I think I cut about 70% of the field instead!

On Friday I had puppy duty so we went to town early to get dog food and chicken food then he had to stay on the breeze porch for three hours while I baled hay. I came back around 1400 and we went to town for tractor parts. I knew I needed to drive the pickup in the am but could not remember why so I took the car, I remembered when I got to town that I needed to pickup tractor parts. The puppy thought he was dying by having to spend three hours on the porch. He cannot run around outside because the man lift is in use and there is no way you could not run over him if he was outside. He has no fear of the equipment.

At 1600 I went back out and baled. The baler was causing me problems and not rolling bales well. I opened up the side and realized the main gear chain was loose and I could no longer adjust the tightness any more, my adjuster was adjusted to the maximum. I drove back to the house as it was getting dark and worked on shortening the chain. Mr Gingerman came out to help me and the progeny held the light. I still have not gotten the machine shed lights wired up yet. I am closer but I need to get it finished. We ended up taking out three links. Should have done 4-5. While we were fixing the chain, of course it had to be totally removed, it was discovered that I had better order a full set of gears as the teeth on some are pretty worn. That is going to be expensive. I have two gears already I believe, so I will need to generate a parts list first before calling for replacements. If they have to come from Italy it will take 30-45 days unless I air mail them and I don’t need them that bad.

Gingerman worked on the 1957 brakes and got them working well enough to safely drive the beast to a shop and have the brakes fully worked over. So I will be adding that to the list next week. He did say there is a radiator leak also. Who would have guessed after sitting idle for 25+ years? So that will need to be added to the list. I have still not figured out how to install new side window felt to keep the windows from rattling around and braking. You Tube is not helping me there. I need to get those repaired before I can start using the truck, I am afraid I will just beat/brake the windows from driving around on the rough ground unless it is repaired.

I went back out to bale some more and it worked much better but the grass is getting too dry, 8% moisture and its just so slick that it does not want to roll up well. I need to put a few more gripper strips on the rollers to get it to form better bales. At midnight I just gave up, there was about another three hours of baling left, if everything worked normal which it was not. I was dumping more bales than I could get formed and wrapped. Besides after three nights working 19-20 hour days I was was wearing down.

French drain completed

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Memorial Day I could not do any haying. So I decided to just grit my teeth and finish digging the French drain for the machine shed hay storage area. I only needed to dig the sump area but that took a while as the tractor could not reach down very far. I tried to put the clamp on forks on the John Deere bucket but that did not work very well. I think if the ground had been easier to dig in then it would have worked great but it’s not. I finished lining everything with gravel, laid down the drain pipe and buried the entire thing in gravel. I then went ahead and filled the bottom of the space with a couple of inches of gravel. After a week of being in place the space feels drier when you walk to the back corner. It smells less like moisture and the humidity is even lower. It’s pretty amazing. I

t was early afternoon so I then leveled the dirt mound for the gazebo and laid in about one inch of gravel over it. I tried to break out the compactor but the throttle cable needs to be redone. It’s torn and won’t keep the throttle wide open. It’s an easy fix, I just need to get the part ordered. As soon as we finish haying its back to fencing and getting the gazebo area prepped. The holes for the gazebo supports need to be dug before the ground turns into concrete.

The sheep almost killed the chives that I planted in the big ceramic planters next to the front steps. They really like chives! They ate them down to the dirt level and then even tried to nibble down further into the roots. I have been thinking about making a screen that goes around the planters to hold the chives in place when they get big they drop down and hang everywhere. I had taken a couple of measurements and decided that the easiest way was to paint a circle on the welding table and just free hand it from there. I am still using stick welding. I have a wire feed but have not tried using it. I was under the impression that the wire fed items needed to be clean and ready for a weld. The stick just burns through all that crap. I need the practice anyways. So I started working on it. I had to grind out all of the nails so there were no sharp edges to the design. It was fairly warm outside so I decided to weld in a short sleeve shirt. This is not something I have done before. I remembered why when I went to take a shower. I had a major flash burn to my forearms and lower biceps. It looked like I had been standing in the hot sun all day. It did not feel good in the hot shower. Eventually, I will get back to the project and finish it.