I have turned the hay twice during the week after work. It took about 4 hours the first time to get it into rows and then it took a little over 2 hours to turn those rows. The first pass took a lot longer as I had to move all the poison oak to the outside of edge of the field so I would not bale it up. The tractor has a pretty good light system on it so I can keep working after dark.
I knew I was going to have to bale on Friday. Usually I don’t start baling until around 1000 in the morning. I like to let the morning dew dry off a little. The hay is super dry on the upper field! I was at it for two hours and kept having pickup problems due to the hay being so dry and slick. I finally gave up after I had about half the field baled and went down to the lower pasture. It is down by the river and holds moisture longer into the day.
There was a lot more moisture down below. I kept pulling in slugs of wet grass at the last minute. I broke three upper shear bolts and two lower shear bolts . The lower ones require multiple covers to come off and are harder to get at. I also had a lot of dried grass trapped under various covers. After I broke the last bolt I just gave up. I took all the covers off to remove any loose hay and will change the shear bolts at home. I am definitely going to need to blow out the entire baler with the leaf blower tomorrow before I get started. I will need to replace the shear bolts also. My plan is to get up and outside by daylight and be baling by 0630.
Annmarie called me, while I had baler covers off, to tell me that we had a bee swarm in the raspberries. After her arm got swollen to twice its size last week I didn’t really want her fighting a swarming hive. I got done as fast as possible and was home in under 30 minutes but the swarm had taken off! We did not really need a fourth hive, I do have a spot for it out in the barn lot but again we don’t need it.
We are still fine tuning the garden water. When we add in more troughs it takes a while to figure out what types of sprayers are needed. I will need to get the front hillside hoses laid out and the lavender garden hooked up to auto timers also. We have multiple auto waterers all over the yard for every little thing. Once they are all set up it makes the rest of the summer go smoothly.
I had to call the microhay equipment dealer today and order a new hydraulic hose for our Abbriata M50 round baler. When I called the company stated that they no longer sell them. There is a cheap Chinese knock off that drops the price point so low that no one will buy an Abbriata. He said they would have to sell them for over $16k now, but they still carry all the parts for them. They had all the parts I needed on hand. I had to order some new netting also there were only two new rolls left in the shed and I had to take an extra today. I managed to not change out the roll but I will have to put the new one on tomorrow.
Our sheep are now allowed onto the back hillside in a specific spot behind our house. They love to go up there just before noon and do a little grazing then fall asleep on the rocky warm hillside.
Stewart Creek Somethings 