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!
Stewart Creek Somethings 