abbriata

Haying season is here

Steve HardinLeave a comment

As in all wise things one should probably look both ways before opening your mouth. I had finished putting together the baler, unfortunately, I missed a lower sprocket that drives the entire front end of the baler. It took an hour to extend the chain and fish it through the correct route. The route I had actually marked with arrows on the machine. Now we were ready to do until I tried to open the dump back and the hydraulic line blew a hole in it! It was the weekend so I had to wait until Tuesday to get the part built in Pendleton, it was Memorial Day weekend. I ordered the correct part first thing Tuesday morning from the Midwest and found a place in Pendleton that actually had metric fittings. Unfortunately, the new hose is bigger and it has a more robust end that means it’s more rigid. We had to put it on three times to find a way to feed it to the correct spot where it did not get pinched when the dump was raised and were it actually fit through the gaps. I had purchased a wrap to go around the outside. We had to remove that over a portion of the hose to get it to fit. We also had to stabilize it with some zip ties as it would not feed through the small opening the original tubing did. It works and it works like a champ! It sounds so much better and I only had to dig it out twice while making 300 bales (6 ton).

We have loaded 112 bales into the barn already, 100 bales went to Sarah and Gingerman for their horses. We have about another 150 bales that need to be picked up and put into the barn. We were pretty picky this year. The cheat grass is bad this year. So we only cut the good stuff. The Rejuvra is working, field one had some bare spots where no cheat grass grew this year. The orchard grass will slowly keep filling in. We are going to spray field 2, all around the machine shed and down by the school house with Rejuvra in the fall.

I think we are going to have to actually plow under the cheat grass. We could burn it but the risk is so high of it taking off that we will just turn it under, disc it then smooth it out.

I finished baling field two yesterday. I wanted to get started on cutting field 1 but I had no sooner gotten into the field when I hit a hidden piece of metal. This caused the blade to bind up as two teeth had popped off and lodged in place crooked to seize the blade in place. I had to go back to the shop, pull out the tooth bar and loosen up all of the clamps. I had the new teeth but the wrong size rivet. I was hoping that D & B carried the correct rivet as I knew that they had some over in fastener section. I found the rivets, they were longer than necessary but I was going to grind them down anyways so it didn’t matter. They had five different sizes of teeth for the mower and none of them will work, they are all too short. Luckily, I only needed the rivets.

I have never had to install teeth onto the bar before. I know you just pound out the rivet, set the new one, put it on a firm surface and bang on it with a big hammer, once flat then just grind it smooth on both sides. Sounds easy. We had an extra bar that got replaced last year so I went ahead and repaired them both. I had to use a 2.5” crescent wrench as a lever attached to a 22mm end wrench on bar guide nuts. They were incredibly stuck and would not come loose. I of course do not have a socket in metric bigger than 20mm. I managed to get the bar in place without cutting my fingers or gloves and it sounded great.

I managed to get once around the field before a different blade popped off and bound up the blade. I drove back, took it apart and was back in the field in under 45 minutes! Not bad, when you figure it takes me almost 8 minutes to drive out to the field. I managed to continue cutting all of field one until 2300. Half of the field is thin and the other half is very thick.

The mower has a guide on the end that is supposed to push the cut hay back into the middle but it was not working and my weld job lasted about ten minutes the first time. I struggled with it the entire time I was cutting field one. So this morning, Gingerman helped me out, I took it off, he welded the bolt in place from the other side and I straightened the piece out with a vice and 3# hammer. Then cut a support and bent it to fit. He welded the crack in the guide then welded the patch in place. He also welded the bolt hole smaller. I drilled the hole back out and put it all together again. It looks like it did originally and it appears that it will work accordingly. We just use any color of spray paint after any welding or repair job, it just so happens that there are a few cans of black out in the shop.

Mr Rainman should be able to get all of field one baled this week. A couple of the fields look good enough that we may be able to get a second cutting on them if we can get a little rain soon. Preferably after Thursday of this week.

Mechanic, I can sing sorta

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the correct final parts arrived for my Italian Abbriata baler. I needed a special welded sprocket to drive the pickup forks. I can mechanic, but I do not particularly like it. However, no one around here will work on something that they did not sell, let alone a piece of equipment that has one American dealership and is made in Italy. So I get to be the mechanic. I ended up replacing five gear sprockets, two chains, various bolts, nuts and pins. I have more spare parts but I have learned that the chain can only be tightened once before it is just time to replace it. I purchased a chain from them and it was twice as long as I needed so I already have the replacement chain. I got the baler put back together and greased, it is ready to roll, I think.

Next I put the sickle bar mower on the Kubota. Now this is the mower that I dropped on my foot last year and broke it. I was pretty gun shy around it and this caused me a few problems. I had to repair two items on the mower and one of them the fastest way to correct was to weld it. My weld did not look bad but it broke about an hour into the mower use. I did not have enough juice to penetrate as deep as I needed. I will need to do something else. For now I just tightened the bolt down as far as it will go and am careful. I greased all of the points on the sickle bar then oiled the blades. It worked! There was a lot of discussion on whether I should start cutting now or wait. I am leaving town next week for a week to go visit navy buddies I have not seen in decades.

I ended up cutting the orchard, upper part of field 2 and went and cut Mike’s field. He stopped by and said it was cleared of all hoses and obstacles so I did it also. I am not going to cut anything else yet as it is supposed to rain on Thursday. I am going to turn it tomorrow and hope to be baling by Tuesday. I don’t have a conditioner so it takes longer for the grass to dry out.

We still have a horrible cheat grass problem in field 3. It is bad. We are going to work on killing the cheat grass down by Mother-in-law’s house. This other field will get added to the kill list.

Haying is progressing with a little help from my friends

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The big obstacle after breaking my foot was going to be getting the rest of the hay baled and then put up in the barn. The day after I broke my foot the baler broke, it is skipping a drive chain due to all the wear on the gears, the gears need replaced, adjusting the chain length and tension is no longer working. That same afternoon the John Deere tractor blew out seal and quit moving due to a malfunction in the front right steering mechanism. Turns out this is a common issue and a design defect that eventually rears its ugly head. The tractor is over ten years old and has been used hard, It has over 2000 hours on it. Due to it not being able to move they had to come out and pull off the assembly. This took about a week to fix but the cost went from $2000 to $4100. This is a lot cheaper than a new tractor but not pleasant. Especially, when you consider I had to order parts for the baler.

The baler is an Abbriata, made in Italy and really only one dealer carries parts in the United States. When I called to order parts the first time I learned that the company no longer sells this brand small round baler. Abbriata was sold recently and the prices jumped almost 50%. So my $13k baler is now $20k. This made it easy to order replacement parts. I got roller gears and chain ordered then the next day remembered that we forgot to order the small gears. I called back and got the same service representative and those got ordered, I now have $2k worth of spare parts coming for the baler. On the plus side, I will be able to sit in a chair and help direct the baler repair. I am getting used to working on it even if I don’t like it.

The Go Getter, Mr Rainman and the former Gimp, now called the Mermaid volunteered to help me bring in bales. (The Gimp made an argument for a name change. Normally, I don’t do name changes for the blog but she was compelling and she stated that a Gimp could not pickup hay and that currently I was the Gimp. It made sense in a convoluted way and she was correct as I was wearing the walking boot not her.) This made me the designated driver but since we were starting first thing in the morning and I could only use one foot to operate the gas and brake simultaneously the first trip was a little jerky jerky and I killed it about ten times before the engine warmed up and I did not have to keep my foot on the gas 100% of the time. We managed to pickup four loads (by we, I mean that the puppy, Milo, and I watched while everyone else did the hard work). It was a Friday so he had to come with me so the siding guy could use the boom without fear of driving over the puppy.

Luckily, the Gingerman offered to come down the next weekend and rake and bale the hay we had down. It took a solid day but he was able to bale around 150 square bales equivalent to 6 tons of grass hay.

Mr Rainman, the Go Getter and Mr Second Career came over during the week and picked up more bales in an attempt to get them out of the fields. Mr Second Career had borrowed the Kubota to mow down weeds and volunteered to help pickup hay. The Go Getter just feels sorry for me and volunteered to bale me out. They got most of the hay into the barn or lamb shed. The square bales are a lot heavier so they went into the lamb shed as they are easier to load and don’t get stacked as high.

The Gingerman tells me there are about 70 round bales in field one still to pickup. He thinks he can do it on Monday. Once that is done we will only have the orchard to mow and rake. I think we will just pick it up loose and feed the alpaca. The last bit down by the school house is about 25-35 bales only. But we have to have the round baler working and the small sickle bar mower working. Both spaces are very small and tight and need the small equipment to be able to fit. This won’t happen until after Fourth of July. I am unable to help with this issue.

Haying for now

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Friday was spent haying some more.  Annmarie spotted a female calf from our bedroom window and then when she looked with the binoculars there was no ear tag!  We knew the cows were hiding more calves but had finally given up and figured they died.  Nope, now I need to tag it, luckily its a girl.  I managed to only shear two shear bolts all day, one upper and one lower.  The upper ones are a lot easier to fix!  I like to take my fiber directly from the soil.  The coffee gets pretty thick when the dust starts to fly.

Mr Professional and the kid started picking up bales from the field.  I think they are dry but Friday night I started to hit some wet patches.  I truly do not want the barn to burn down. After much discussion I am again using the horse training corral to store hay in.  They are out in the open, and since they are wrapped they won’t absorb a lot of moisture.  This was the best plan and the safest.

The micro hay equipment is nice, once you get used to it!  We are learning a  few things, like don’t row the hay or make the rows too high.  If you do drive over the hay rows watch the drive shaft picking up hay and wrapping around the driveline.  You will need to cut that off before it becomes a problem or it will stall out the tractor and it is a lot harder to get out when it is jammed in there.  Rocks are bad, the baler does not like them.  I am going to have to pick up rocks in the far upper field.  There are too many loose big rocks, even fist sized is too big.  The netting wrap is great but you really have to pull on the cord for about 3 seconds to get the friction roller engaged.  Once the bail is wrapped a couple of times you can let go and the machine does the rest.  The hydraulic rear lifting is amazing.  This is crucial when something goes wrong or you shear a bolt.  On the other the hydraulics were self contained and the pump was reliant on the pto so when you sheared a safety bolt and needed to lift the back of the baler it had to be done by hand and its very heavy.  Keep lots of shear bolts on hand, I recommend 36 of each kind.  It’s a stupid reason to have to stop and go to the hardware store to try and find them.  They are hardness 8.8 which is hard to find, everything easily obtained was harder and you don’t want a harder shear bolt.  Clean out both sides of the baler every time you shear a bolt.  This is probably overkill but you have the covers off anyways and it makes me feel better.  Clean off the equipment every night with the hose, get all that stuff and dirt off your machine.  Remember the bale counter is triggered every time you lift the tailgate on the baler so if you keep breaking stuff and lifting the back the count can be off by quite a bit.  You will need to count bales when you load them unless you never do anything wrong and all goes smoothly.  I have been unfortunate and have not had this problem.  Don’t take a super tight turn as you can catch the pto shaft with your rear tire, this is not good.  Don’t be surprised when you start out if the bale rolls forever.  It takes a bit to learn how to work the baler, we have some bales with 30-40 layers, they will be very hard to get into.  The average is about 8 wraps very reasonable.

The kid left early afternoon and Mr Professional was done loading hay, so he went out to bale hay while I went out to pick up bales.  I went up to the far field and picked up the triticale. We got 61 bales, 2400# not exactly a whopper crop off of 3 acres.  Between the flooding and my inexperience in prepping the field in the fall and planting it it was very lackluster. I tried to pick up rocks but there were a lot and the pickup bed was full of gravel for fencing, the hay and rocks were starting to cause the safety chains to drag on the ground.  I need to do some serious rock picking up here.   I will break out the arena groomer after the next cutting and work this field smooth and pick up rocks.

When I got to the barn I realized that I had not disposed of a winter’s worth of hay cord, that took a while to get them into old feed sacks.  I then had to move last years hay over to the front so we will use it first.  It is old and dry so I will use it as feed/bedding once we get the barn cleaned out.  I unloaded trailer and was about 50% done when it started to rain again.  Mr Professional came by and helped me unload the trailer, I stacked it until there were 10 bales left and I just called it quits!  I was beat and tired and done for the day it was dinner time anyways.  We only got 7/100” of rain Friday night.