haying

Cleanup day 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This has been a long week for me. I have been working at the paying job during the day and fixing haying equipment and haying after work. I cut the hay on Sunday and then turned it on Tuesday after I got the tire for the new tractor repaired and installed. I had to tighten bolts on the power rake so I could rake. I was able to do that with a little bit of tractor light. I spent Wednesday after work on repairing the baler. I was able to get most of it repaired but on Thursday it still took me two hours to finish it. I had to clean up hydraulic fluid from the entire outside so I could get to the hose with a micro-hole in it replaced. The dirt and dust and hay had formed quite the layer of gunk all over the baler. I baled Thursday night until 0130 when the grass started to get super wet. I did not manage to get the baler as silent as it used to be but it worked like a charm after I replaced the guts.

Friday morning the Quiet One was coming over at 0700 or so I thought. Annmarie told me that she was here at 0630. Turns out I had said 0600 and forgot. I was out the door and working by 0705. We worked on getting the greenhouse finished. It took us until 1300 to get it all assembled except for the front door which I can do alone. The Quiet One was going bear hunting and wanted to get up there early on Friday afternoon. I needed to finish baling hay so I did that after dinner and was home by dark. I had made arrangements to have a couple of teenage brothers come out on Saturday and Sunday to help me clean up. The plan is to get the yard all ready for the grandson’s birthday party. I won’t have the bricks laid on the floor in the Gazebo but all of the trash and stuff will be put away. At least that is the plan. It will depend on how hard they work. I am sure their father has warned them about my work ethic and expectations.

The boys came out this morning and we started to work immediately. I had them bring lunches so we could stop for lunch and they would not have to go anywhere. Especially since they are not driving and had to be dropped off. My plan was to just start out by the driveway and slowly work our way toward the house. I figured it all has to be done but doing it this way creates a systematic plan. Plus, to clean up the driveway we had to empty out both broken cars that are going to the scrapyard. The pickup we were able to tow with the tractor. I tried to start it and it actually tried once to start so when we towed it to the machine shed I put the battery charger on it. I would love to drive them both to the junkyard. Weeds got pulled, trash got tossed, vehicles cleaned out, scrap moved to the burn pile or metal pile. The bags of soil that I had not taken out to the garden got loaded into the tractor bucket and taken over to the garden, cut open and both troughs are now full of soil. After a couple of hours on the driveway we hooked up the flat bed trailer to the tractor and drove over to pickup all of the hay I had just baled. They picked up almost 90 bales of beautiful grass hay. We are going to trade the grass hay for some large alfalfa bales that can be easily fed to the cows this winter.

Mr Toad was on the front hillside just jumping around. I might have disturbed him when I was pulling up thistles.

After we had filled up the troughs with soil I noticed a couple of buzzards flying around and landing in the apple tree. I love the buzzards. We did not used to have any and it was hard to tell if something had died. Nowadays I can always tell when there is a carcass on the farm as they show up and circle it. Today was no exception, there was an old dead ewe under the apple tree. We left her and I said we would come back later today and take care of her.

After lunch the vehicle items migrated into the house or out back of it to be addressed at a later time. I am sticking to the plan and cleaning as we go. I had been working on knicknames for them all day long. I had Mr Shady (older brother) doing weed eating after they cleaned up all of the branches. I had the T-shirt Bandit raking sand in the gazebo. The sand had gotten all blown up against one side of the gazebo. I looked over once and he was on his cell phone. There was a round of verbal prompting on the correct location for the phone and it was never an issue for the rest of the day. After he raked it was time to go deal with the corpse. I was able to get the tractor bucket fairly close to the corpse. The T-shirt Bandit kept trying to hold his T-shirt over his nose like a bandit would in an old time stagecoach robbery. I think he thought it was going to make things smell better, it did not. It was pretty rank.

Once we got that carcass dropped off we came back to the yard and beat up on the trumpet vine. I am trying to get it to grow on its trellis so we wound it around the trellis and tied it up in several places in the hopes that it would grow where it is supposed to. I cut away every thing that was growing against the house. Occasionally, I get a little overly excited and cut out too much of the vine but it cannot grow under the expensive siding we just got done last year!

We still have some holes to fill in yard and I am going to clean off the old house porch plus clean up the garden area in the back of the house. We are doing so well I am thinking about trying to get the rock wall completed also! Mr Shady kept his sunglasses on the entire time and just kept working. It was refreshing.

Granary progress

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the granary situation has improved dramatically. It was going to cost almost $700 in sheet metal and welding wire to make another 5x5x5’ bin and one of the nephews sent me a link for a local person selling two large upright bins! I did not need both of them despite their willingness to sell me both. So for $750 they delivered it to the house on Friday. I had cleared a spot and dropped a bunch of gravel in place but after looking at the container I think I need to level the area and then drill five holes in the ground, add some wire and fill them up with concrete. I can take a piece of all thread and put it into the concrete when it’s wet. I don’t think I will try and line up the holes with the grain bin. I will just weld some plates and bolt them in place.

I also managed to get some paint sprayed on the finished bin I repaired and got the slider door installed. Of course when I used a chain to roll the bin I bent the brand new door. I crawled inside and beat it back into shape with a hammer. It works now, it’s a little stiff but that is not a bad thing as I want opening the door to be an intentional act. It looks like the bin has a ladder built into its side so someone can climb the bin and open the top when filling it. This is a good thing as long as you are not scared of heights. I will have to get the cap removal process down before we lift it into the air. I would like to stand on the ground while learning, not holding onto the ladder with one arm 25’ into the air while fighting the lid with the other.

The Naked Gardener called on Thursday to say that he thinks his field is ready to cut again. I swung by on Friday and he is right, it is ready. So I spent most of the day Friday tearing the baler apart. I figured out that it is a lot easier to work on if you remove the front arms and some extra pieces. It took about an hour to disassemble the front but it was a lot easier getting to everything else. There was one guide piece I could not remove but I just worked around it. I was going to have to grind the nuts off and it is just not necessary as I am not replacing it. I replaced about 1/3 of the pickups and tubes. Anything that was bent got tossed in the trash. I have about an hour left to get the races lined up and then I can spend another hour putting the front all back together. I also need to replace a hydraulic hose. The entire thing is covered in hydraulic fluid. It needs a wash down.

Unfortunately, I am on a timer now. I went over and cut the field this evening. So the new tractor “Juicy” has had a flat tire for two weeks in the upper field, I had to go up and remove the tire tonight so it can be fixed. The hay turner is on the back and it needs about 45 minutes of TLC before I can go turn the hay. Once that is done then I will need to spend three hours with the baler to get it up and running so I can bale the hay!

I also will need to install the two new gates on our stairs to prevent the grandchild from crawling up and falling down from the bottom or falling down the stairs from the top. This is what happens when your grandparents work in the hospital and see bad stuff all the time.

The new chickens area settling in nicely. All of them are staying out of the yard which is good for them as being a play toy for the dog tends to an eventual slow death.

We now have three kittens living under the old house porch. We have installed a temporary fence to keep Mouse away from them as he is a definite kitten killer. He only comes on weekends with the kids. Of course, the kittens don’t know this so they were going through the fence as they are now starting to become very active. So we now have a plastic chicken netting zip tied to the fence so the kittens cannot get through the fence. Milo likes the kittens so we will work on socializing him to them. He still does not like their mother and barks at her whenever he sees her.

Haying done for now.

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well we do actually go on vacation occasionally, we spent a week in Cove at Ascension summer camp. I am the nurse and Annmarie is the priest. I spend the week working on my jewelry as I am always too busy at home. I was able to complete three chains that were in various stages of completion. While we were away the Quiet One mowed the entire property again to knock down all the cheat grass a second time. It takes two mowings to get it knocked down. They did all the main fields. I spent one Sunday mowing around the buildings and along the road and up top a single time around the CRP. They had already gone around twice on three sides. This helps keep the weeds from creeping in from the fence lines. I did not see a single rabbit while I was mowing. We did have a second calf born while we were away, it is a little buy and he is already bigger than his three week old sister. He is a beautiful brown color. This is the second boy that has been brown.

I did try and mow on the back side of field #1 but it is tough. I just knocked down the high stuff. There is still a tipping point from the old hole that I did not get completely filled. So you have to be careful with the tractor or it will tip over. I really need to get the Gingerman over here with a dozer and cut a road on the back side so I can fence off the stream-bed. We might even be able to even out the side to the point that I could grow some grass on this side. I might be able to get 1-2 acres planted in grass. It’s a long term goal. It is going to require a dozer. I wouldn’t mind planting a couple of trees back there also.

The chickens have been getting decimated so we decided to upgrade our security. We now have a Ring camera on the backside of the old house and it watches the coop and entire ram pasture/back of barn. We should now be able to see coyotes, raccoons and other predators. It is a lot easier to review footage when it gets marked because something is there.

Our garden is pumping out herbs and we just picked all our fall planted garlic. The nice part was it was free! We saved garlic from last year and planted it in the fall, we will do the same thing again this year. We use an entire large brown paper bag of garlic over the course of a year. Garlic is a root vegetable, not a spice. We are picking raspberries also. We are getting about a quart every day now. Annmarie has started to freeze some for use during the winter. We are not going to get much tree fruit this year. The late freeze killed the buds, plus last year was a bumper crop and the trees like to rest after a great year. But our thornless blackberries and the wild blackberries are incredible this year. I picked almost 25 gallons last year. I will probably have to fill in the missing fruit with blackberries this year so I suspect I will need to pick at least 40 gallons this year. If you equate that to the price of buying fruit we probably save $800-1000 in fresh fruit by freezing our own. Plus, I don’t mind picking blackberries, it is fairly relaxing.

Haying again

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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!

More priorities

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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.