Now that Pendleton Round-Up is over I can get back to farming, I need to cut the neighbor’s hay field. Before I could go cut hay I needed to do a little work on the tractors. I put the sickle bar mower on the Kubota after I dropped off the weed mower and forks. I took the John Deere and hosed it down as it was covered in dust and mud. I ended up finding a cracked cowling. As I was fixing that with zip ties I discovered the reason it cracked is that the metal support running along the inside had broken off from its plastic holder. So I drilled a couple of holes in the metal support and used my new fancy body zip ties to hold it in place. They work pretty good!
I went over and scoped out the field to be cut and moved the sprinklers out of the field. It was too wet to cut early in the week so I ended up cutting it late afternoon on Thursday. The grass was even thicker this time than the spring cutting! It was incredibly thick. I went over it twice with the sickle bar mower in opposite directions to try and ensure I got it all cut. Cutting the field has ensured that we will get rain this week and big surprise, three days later we got 1/4” of rain! I would have turned the hay today but instead I am going to have to wait 1-2 days more and let the top of the grass dry out some before turning it. I had some big thick piles so I may just have to give up and turn it tomorrow afternoon and then turn it again the next day. After that I may be able to wait two days and then bale it. I am going to have to be careful to not bale it wet. I think I can get close ot two ton (100 bales) of beautiful grass.
Our second batch of chickens are now laying eggs. We are getting close to a dozen a day now. I have a couple more roosters to dispatch. We have four now and I am only going to keep two. I did find a stash of about two dozen eggs in one of the barn hay feeders when I was cleaning out the barn. I just tossed them out the window. The hen that had managed to hatch out some chicks did not manage to keep any of them alive. I was going to be surprised if she could save that lone chick by living out in the barn with three barn cats. The new chickens need to learn to stay out of our yard so the dogs don’t get them.
I need to spend a day grinding grain. I have about 400# to grind up. It should fill the rest of my chicken barrels I have stashed in the back of the chicken coop. I will be going through about 50#/week all winter long.
Stewart Creek Somethings 