haying

Haying completed, for this year…

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman and I went over last weekend and finished getting the rest of the woven wire up in the field in Hermiston. The only thing left is to get a row of electric wire mounted near the vinyl fence on one side of the field and we can drop off the ewe sheep. It only took about four hours for the both of us but I am not even sure I could have done it alone without cutting the woven wire near each tree. I would not have been able to get it behind the tree alone intact. It of course ended up raining on Sunday afternoon.

Today I finally managed to get the last of the hay picked up and haying done for this calendar year. I had some help loading the trailer and the back of the pickup. Loading the back of the pickup allowed me to only have to make one trip! I had to toss some of the small bales from last week back into the machine shed before I had enough room to empty out the trailer. There is probably almost 5000# of hay in small round bales ready to be fed. We will feed out the small round bales before I use the large bales. There is probably 6-8 weeks worth of feed in just round bales and that is really dependent on when we get our final freeze or snow flies.

I have to say that loading and unloading two ton of hay by myself is not quite as easy as it used to be. I am definitely more tired than I would have been even five years ago. Again, working until 0300 at the paying job then haying the next day is not a normal schedule. I just need to get all of the hay equipment cleaned off and put away back into the machine shed for the winter.

My next project that I hope to get to this weekend is getting the bricks laid down for the gazebo. I just have to get the compactor running then spread out the sand and compact it down. Then it is merely laying out 1600 bricks in a pattern.

Haying more done

Steve HardinLeave a comment

In a self defense move, I rolled all of the completed bales to the outside of the upper field. I was pretty certain I was going to have to pick them up alone and I wanted to make it easier on myself. I also wanted to leave the upper field clean so after I moved all the completed bales I went through the entire field again and raked it up a second time into four long rows. I managed to get another 20 bales out of the leftover grass from the first baling.

I left the bottom for an around a week, the Gingerman went over and raked it up into rows so I could sleep after working the night shift. It rained a 1/4” of rain later that week so I let it sit for a few more days before turning it again. I then let it sit for another five days in the hopes that it would dry out.

When I went over to bale it I had loaded up on shear bolts so the toolbar was all ready for me to repair any issues. I broke almost 25 shear bolts just baling the small bottom area. I would get close then an entire section of wet damp grass would jump into the baler and break the shear bolt! There was a very large amount of swearing involved in getting that field all baled up. By the time I was done it was taking me about three minutes to replace the shear bolt and get the tractor up and going again.

I had Mr Rainman for two days last weekend and we concentrated on getting the lower bales picked up one day. We were able to load up 30 bales into the back of the pickup, strap down each of the three rows and then creep up the steep rocky road in 4wd low. We only lost part of one load when the strap popped loose. We put 30 bales into each cow feeder at the house. So we filled all three feeders, one for the female pregnant cows, one for the feeder cows below and then one in Alcatraz. Currently, the only animals in Alcatraz are our three rams. Eventually, we will have to sort off the bull and put him in there with the rams.

We took the wettest bales and dumped them out for feed to be immediately eaten. Unfortunately, despite the farm looking like a food desert the cows and sheep are ignoring the lush green grass available in the feeders. Obviously, they know something we do not.

Haying half done

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been a long couple of weeks. I am still covering random night shifts at work so I am trying to squeeze in haying in between the repairs, sleep and rain. I was going over to cut the neighbor’s field when I realized that the stop nut had fallen off of the sickle bar transport bar. It is of course Metric and I do not have a replacement laying around, but what I did have laying around was a whole bunch of cable clamps of various sizes. I clamped one of those onto the bar and it works great as a stop nut! This will now be my permanent fix.

I ended up having to cut the field twice, it was pretty thick, tall and wet so it wanted to push down and avoid the sickle bar mower. Once I had it all down I had to leave it for five days before I could turn it the first time. It is beautiful grass hay but if I bale it wet I am just going to create a fire hazard at our place.

Said neighbor convinced me I should cut his lower field also. It was even taller and wetter than the upper field! It also had a lot of sprinkler heads poking up out of the ground. I managed to get it all cut and only cut off one sprinkler head 3/4” PVC pipe riser.

I had to turn the upper field two more times before I baled it. Even after all of that I had a two sections of the upper field, about 10 bales that I had to wait until I did the lower section as they were just too wet.

Haying again

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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.

Haying completed, for now

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman says I plan vacations around haying season. I took a week off and went and visited old buddies from the military for a week. He ended up having to finish rowing and baling field one. That would not have been too bad but the field is very rough. We need to rig some kind of ground roller up so we can run it over the ground in the spring! We really need to get some of the ridges and bumps out of the field. Having the elk in there every winter is not helping it at all either. They are leaving holes from digging in the snow. On those little tractors it is very bouncy.

Honestly, the best part of my vacation was not having to finish picking up bales from the field! Mr Rainman brought in all of the bales and stacked them into the barn. He is a rockstar. I think if the two of us finish raising the height of the bales in the barn we will be able to get all of the second cutting into the barn.

We still have to move the old hay from two years ago from the old lamb shed into the barn on the overhead walkway. We will use it for bedding for the winter. I used to sell it but I realized eventually that I could just use it for bedding. The new hay is so much nicer that the sheep really just ignore the old stuff and spread it around looking for a couple of wonderful morsels. This way I do not have to buy any straw.

It looks like we may get a second cutting on about 1/3 of field #1 and #2. So I figure around 2-3 tons and I will cut the Naked Gardener’s field for a second time also. He is about two miles away from our house so I just drive over with my small equipment as needed until I get it all done.

He ended up finding a pheasant’s nest and she would not give it up, so he placed two torn up bales on either side of the nest. The hen seemed to think that was plenty of cover and came right back to sit on the nest.

We have decided to spray some more Rejuvra this fall. We are going to go down by the schoolhouse and see if we can get the good grass to spread out. We are also going to spray a section of field #2 and #1. Field #3 and #4 are a waste currently. They are 100% cheat grass. I really need to burn the fields but the fire’s have already started up around us. I am going to plow them. It’s another way to kill the cheat grass seed. It cannot emerge when it is buried under a lot of soil. I am just not sure what will work better.