We have multiple fires around us so sunsets are now very spectacular.
Monday after work the Quiet One and Annmarie came out and helped me pickup 6 ton of hay from the neighbor’s place. We stacked all of it over by the grain bins then used the new corral pieces to keep the alpaca and deer off of the hay. We picked up another 290 bales. We did have to dump off one bale on the edge of the field. It smelled very bad. I am sure there was some dead animal inside the bale but I never saw anything when I was baling hay. It was so bad there was no way I was going to take it back to the house and unroll it.
At some point I am going to have add it all up to know how much is actually out there but it is enough! I do know that. I will still need to cut the Naked Gardener’s field a second time and that will generate over 2 ton plus I may need to cut field one a second time but that will depend on when I can get the baler rebuilt.
We are going to buy a ton of bagged cattle feed to supplement the grass this winter. We are getting a heck of a price on it. It is very high protein so it will help offset the low protein count in the grass hay.
Our back creek is starting to dry up. It is barely flowing, this is about two weeks early for us.
The chickens are making me crazy. We had 27 hens after all the “Townie” chickens were taken in. They were laying eggs like crazy. Then I got busy haying and kept forgetting to get eggs. Something started to eat all of the eggs. All I would find were shells in the coop. So I had an egg thief. Last week I went out after dark to pickup eggs (don’t want the egg thief to get them) and I actually counted chickens! Holy smokes! There were only 8 hens and 3 roosters. We have lost 19 hens and one rooster. All of the town chickens have succumbed to the farm hazards. Annmarie thinks I need to lock them into the coop yard but after the cows tore into the backside of the enclosure I will need to spend a couple of days of rebuilding the entire chicken yard to make this a reality. I am unwilling to give up two days of farm work for the chickens yet. The chickens are still laying more eggs than our household can use so we are still winning. If we have to buy eggs for ourselves then I count that as a loss. We have not had to do this since I got chickens. The few chicken customers we had are going without again. It is feast or famine around here when it comes to having spare chicken eggs.
We purchased a ring camera to watch the coop and ram pasture. I will get it figured out so an end can be dished out to the offending party. It takes 6-8 months to raise a chicken until it can lay eggs.
I had more haying to do over the weekend. I cut down what looked good at the neighbor’s. The weather was so warm that I had to turn it in 24 hours and was baling it the next day. I did have to finish putting the baler together before I could bale anything. I have decided that I will need to chain up the baler next time I work on it. I need to take both of the support arms off of it so I can get into the internal pickups much easier. I am wasting time trying to squeeze myself into a little area and work in a cramped space. If I chain the front part up so it does not fall then I can just chock the wheels and work on it with nothing in the front. I only need to remove two bolts to get it off.
I took some time on Friday to go over and pickup an old horse arena, some homemade panels and scrap pipe from the Naked Gardener. I think I will use them to circle the hay pile I am putting up next to the grain bins. The four homemade panels are for the spring crossing. I have panels from another horse arena set installed there now and this will allow me to pull all those panels back together to form a circle.
I baled Saturday until it got so hot that the grass would no longer bale. I came back out after dinner and worked until 2330. The grass was baling very well but I was tired after a 16 hour day and was ready for bed. I busted a shear bolt because I was not paying attention to what I was doing, I think I dozed off so the quitting time whistle was blown and I went home, cleaned up and went to bed so I could be out by 0730 and baling again. I needed to bale in the morning before it got too hot. I was able to bale for two hours before I heard a clang and the shear bolt snapped again. I tried to replace the shear bolt but I could not turn the pickups by hand. So I had to move some grass around and I discovered the broken pickup string of three pickups that had broken loose and jammed the works up. I was talking with Mr Rainman and after the baler rebuild last year with all new chain sprockets and new chains we think all of the slop is gone and now the weak point is the old bolts in the pickup area. I had already placed an order for more parts and now I need to wait until they come then order the rest of the parts to change out all of the internal pickup forks and all of the bolts. I have 2-3 bent pickup guides and those will need to be changed out also. A total rebuild of the internal pieces so that all the weak spots go away.
We got some hanging baskets and I installed two hooks on the front porch. We are going to see how the baskets do in the wind before we install more hooks. We would like to have hooks all across the entire front porch with flowers hanging down. It would look very cool!
I was forced to finally tear into the instant hot water propane tank. We had gotten past the decision to run the dishwasher or washing machine; washing machine or shower; shower or washing machine, if you tried to run two at the same time no one gets hot water. I have to do it every 1-2 years. I do run vinegar through it every year to minimize the hard water deposits to prevent the pipes from corroding. However, there is no warning about the flies. The flies come down the exhaust pipe and then die in the squirrel cage fan. They get stuck in the fan and get smeared inside the circular part of the squirrel cage, creating a drag for the air so the heater is not cooled down enough. This causes an error when there is too much demand on the hot water heater. I have to unplug some electrical connections and remove the fan then clean up the fan and then wipe out all of the bug guts from the inside wall of the fan housing. It takes a couple of hours to get it all cleaned and dried. Annmarie was wondering why her hair dryer was out and plugged in upstairs when she got home. I used it to make sure the fan was completely dry before reinstalling it. I only forgot to plug one thing back together and I figured that out when I tried to start it and it threw a code immediately and refused to heat up water. We are now back to unlimited hot water of any quantity!
We had a fire scare last week. Someone had one of their hay stacks catch on fire on the edge of Pilot Rock. The trouble was it was the edge closest to our house and the wind was blowing almost 20 MPH directly towards our house. The state police stopped and gave us a warning to get ready to evacuate. I went out and hooked up the disc to the tractor and started to disc next to the fence and next to the road and around all of the buildings. Normally, we have fires a little later in the season after the wheat field is harvested. They disc in a nice fire break all around the wheat field as soon as they harvest the outside. In a month there would have already been a fire break in place. The Gingerman is working on the brakes of the old truck so we can get it set up to fight fire. I ended up getting very dirty and will be spraying the area in the early spring to kill the vegetation so that it will be easier to disc.
One of our neighbors offered to have me cut one of their fields that had been flooded out in the spring. It had random cheat grass throughout it and it took some driving around with the sickle bar before I figured out what parts of it were worth cutting for hay. Of course before I could even cut anything I had to repair the tractor tire that got punctured while discing for a fire break. Of course, the tire could not be repaired the internal side wall was breaking apart, I am sure it is from moving the large bales. I need to keep more air in the front tires. I had to go in and pickup the tire on Friday.
I had a hard time getting to the sickle bar mower as it was on the tractor with the flat. I got the sickle bar off but had already taken the flat tire off of the tractor. So I just started the tractor, leveled off the bucket, lifted the front tires off the ground and slid forward on the bucket, Clementine did just fine. I did this so I had enough room to squeeze in Juicy behind and hook up the sickle bar. I had to fight, wiggle, cuss and lever the sickle bar to get it hooked up to the new Kubota. The five foot mower is lot for that little tractor. I was able to get the field cut. The next afternoon I turned the hay and it was going to be ready to be baled on Saturday. It is drying out very fast. I just needed to finish reassembly on the baler.
Well I spent most of Friday being a mechanic. I was able to bale hay for a while until I had the baler explode again. Same problem, one of the entire rows of pickup tines gave out when I tried to push a huge clump into the baler. This of course got jammed inside the baler and I was done. So then I proceeded to tear the baler apart again except this time I broke one pickup tine on the left side and an entire row on the right side. So I had to take off all of the pickup guidance channels but three. Of course I had three bolts that I could not loosen. Those hex key heads might be smooth for the incoming grass but there is no room inside the baler to really put some English on the bolt and I had to grind off three more bolt heads. Luckily, they were not any of the bolts I had just installed last week. I am sure that the bolts are kinda welding themselves to the channels with rust. Once I grind off the heads I can turn the lower part of the bolt with my fingers. I am even hosing them with some penetrating lubricant prior to attempting their removal. Luckily, I performed no blood sacrifice on their removal. My hands are still trying to heal from the first attempt.
I wanted to use the tractor to haul the trailer instead of the pickup. There is a tight corner at the far end and there is no reason to use the pickup. Unfortunately, I could not find the correct bar with a 2 5/8” ball mounted on it. I ended up chaining it to a three point bar. Not exactly secure but it lasted for two days and I ordered a premade three point hitch with a 2” receiver for a stinger so I can use a 2 5/8” ball and the trailer will be secure. I ordered it on Saturday and it should arrive by Monday, that is pretty fast! So on Saturday Annmarie and I went out and started to pickup bales out of the field and unload them into the barn. I only turned about 75% of the bales in field one and it was noticeable. We had some wet soldiers so those got set outside the barn on their side to dry. They will be fed to the boys in Alcatraz and the yearlings in the orchard. Nothing goes to waste. Every time we picked up a load we grabbed two bales that had to be dumped and were not wrapped. Those go to animals in Alcatraz, orchard or the horse. We made four trips to pickup hay and unloaded three loads into the barn (191 bales). The two of us got 4 ton loaded into the barn on Saturday and one ton of soldiers drying out (51 bales).
We were able to get a great view of the new calf. I ended up dumping six bales off the side of the trailer right near the gate and the cows got free food. She was very visible.
On Sunday I went to TJ Hooker’s house and sheared his alpaca. I ended up shearing it standing up. I only cut it once, but it had not been shorn ever and it was three years old so it was a little wild. I was able to trim its toes and even had to grind its teeth straight. I did not need to cut off its fighting teeth as they were quite small. I will probably have to do that next year. I told him to not wait so long. I am still trying to decide if trading shearing for fencing material is a realistic business proposition.
Afterwards I went home to pickup more bales of hay. The Quiet One and Rock Slayer came out to help. We unloaded the load waiting for us into the barn and it was time to take the stack from 8 feet height to 16 feet, that top half is the hardest! The Quiet One did most of the crawling around on top of the bales while the Rock Slayer and I tossed them up to her. We picked up five more loads and put three of them into the barn. We added another 7 ton of hay into the barn and then stacked another 3 ton over by the grain bins. Rock Slayer had to leave but the Quiet One was game to keep going until we picked up all the bales. We had to make three more trips to get all of the bales. We did open up field two so the cows can get in there and eat the downed unbaled hay and eat the green grass. Field one is all closed up and if we get more rain I may get a second cutting off of field one.
We did stop and look at the Gingerman’s hive up outside of field one. It is still alive and kicking. Not a ton of bees but they are working and are present. They were pretty calm, I picked the lid off without any protection and peeked inside the hive.
We ended up piling another 435 bales or 8.7 tons of hay over by the grain bins. The bales weigh around 40# so they can be thrown and moved easily but after 1000 bales it starts to add up! I did learn that I can only throw the bales about ten feet into the air. I just cannot get any higher. I only ended up with three blisters between my fingers from the hay hooks. Even with gloves those parts of my hand don’t get a lot of friction. I do change out which fingers the hooks go between on a regular basis in an attempt to slow down the blisters.
Overall, I am super excited about the hay. I had a neighbor offer up about 3-4 more acres to cut and I still need to cut down by the schoolhouse plus I still have a second cutting on the Naked Gardener’s property. We are going to not purchase any hay this year for the cows and feed out what we have. I will need to get the hay rearranged in the machine shed so I can put more small bales in there. I also need to fix the wall of the old lamb shed so that I can stick bales in there for the winter. It’s a good hay year.
Sunday I spent all day repairing equipment. The eight tines that I replaced on the power rake did not take too long. I was missing a bolt and had to dig through a three gallon bucket to find the correct size bolt and nut. I had cut late Saturday morning but the hay would not be ready to turn until Monday. It would have to wait until after I got off of work.
I do like the Abbriata M50 round baler but I snapped off two pickup tines on the same support bar and they created a stopping pin effect. The tines cannot be turned. I don’t have an overhead lift so I have to just lay on the ground and work on it. I also can crawl between the arms and reach inside the machine. It is not super comfortable and requires a lot of crawling around and stomach crunches to lift your upper body 6-8” off of the ground. I of course could not get three of the hay guides removed and my large 60V DeWalt grinder would not fit inside the opening and allow me to move it around enough to grind the heads off. I ended up driving to Pendleton and buying a 20V DeWalt grinder that is much smaller and fits inside the baler opening. I had all three bolt heads ground down in ten minutes. Of course once I got the guides out of the way I could hand turn the stubs of the bolts out of their retaining nuts. I was able to change out and install the new rake teeth and support bar.
There was a lot of swearing and I kept tearing up my hands and bleeding all over the equipment. I actually had to stop working and slide my hand into a leather glove so the blood would quit running down my knuckle. The leather glove absorbs blood and puts pressure on the wound. Eventually, I found a first aid kit on one of the tractors and used a bandage and some cleaning solution to treat the injury. There was more swearing before I was done. Once my abdominal muscles started to cramp up on me while I was reassembling the equipment I wanted to quit. But I knew I would just have to get it done eventually anyways so I might as well just get it done. My abdominal muscles still hurt two days later.
Monday I came home and spent four hours rowing hay. I had plans to row hay Sunday evening but the hay was still wet and instead I rolled bales that were on the ground in field #1. They were getting a wet spot on the bottom. I cannot pickup hay bales yet until I get them all cut. One the neighbors offered to have me come cut one of their grass fields so it doesn’t go to waste. I am still figuring out how to squeeze it in.
I did go out and work on making some bales today after work. I have about 1/3 of the hay put up but I was running out of shear bolts. The hay is in large rows and it keeps sucking in too much and snapping the shear bolt when I am close to full. I think I just need to dump lighter bales to avoid this issue. I will pick up more bolts tomorrow and hopefully finish tomorrow.
Stewart Creek Somethings 