haying

Sidelined the hard way

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Fridays the puppy and I hang out, do some housework and then eventually go out and do some other things. The siding is still being installed so the puppy cannot be running around the yard with the overhead lift being used. So we worked on installing two more eye hooks on the green bean bin so we can tie up the bean pole evenly and keep the wind from bending it under the weight of the bean vines. We also had to go out and drill about 25 holes in the asparagus/strawberry bin. It was holding water again. The drain hole at the bottom is working but its slow and it cannot keep up. I have holes at all levels now so it should drain out just fine now.

The correct siding came on Thursday, the wrong kind had been delivered, so on Friday the base row needed to be set. It takes this special metal hanger that is installed first then the siding sits on it. The worker was having quite the time finding a way to run a level around the base as in some corners there was a 2” difference over 10’! He spent a lot of time getting it set in the correct spot. The first piece of horizontal siding went up on Friday. I was able to leave the puppy in the yard so I could go work on the sickle bar mower. It looks like they just need to get the horizontal siding on and then caulked and they will be done with the siding job.

There is a piece at the outer edge that pushes the outside edge back into the middle. It got bent so I wanted to take it off, beat on it with a hammer and decide if it needed anything else. I was working on it with the sickle bar in the upright position and it was slow going. I opted to lower the sickle bar to make it easier to work on. I undid the bar holding it upright then just dropped the bar. There is this chain mechanism that usually catches it. Upon later reflection that chain only engages when the three point hitch is elevated which it was not. I dropped that bar directly on top of my right foot. To say that I may have said a few choice words after a solid howl is an understatement. As soon as I could catch my breath I went on a verbal rampage against the sickle bar. It took about 15 minutes before I could move or feel my toes. Once I could move my toes I was pretty sure I had broken my foot, the pain and swelling were getting localized.

I had called Annmarie, she was still at work, to come get me. I considered driving but it was my right foot and I could not walk. My car is a standard and I was certain I could not drive with my right foot. I made such a raucous that the siding guy hollered out and asked if I needed any help. I yelled back that I had just broken my foot but was fine. He went back to siding. I ended up in the ER, I broke a metatarsal in my right foot. I am on crutches, wearing a boot and am 100% non-weight bearing for the next eight weeks! This totally sucks! Luckily, Mr Rainman is chugging away at the hay. He has another 300 bales done and two more fields cut. There is hope that he can be done with haying by the end of the week. Once the haying is done then the gazebo is the next project. I have a new throttle cable coming for the compactor and once that is installed we can prep the pad for the gazebo.

This is really going to slow down my summer. The hardest part of the whole thing is just sitting around. I hate it already and its only been two days!

The dreaded hay pickup

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Every year I am confronted with the same problem. They hay, once baled needs to get into the barn. The bales are light but plentiful so they do not lend themselves to mechanical pickup. Therefore, it must be done manually. Ideally, you would have a driver, a stacker on the flatbed and two people walking along and dumping bales on the flatbed. I never have this many people. I have done it alone, with two people, three people and four. Four is my favorite but three is what I shoot for most years. The Progeny and Gingerman agreed to help me on Saturday. We have an “atmospheric river“ coming on Sunday so I wanted to pickup as much baled hay as possible and get it into the barn before then. Meathead was driving and Gingerman and I would load and stack, once at the barn she would count and we would unload and stack in the barn.

We ended up pulling five loads of hay out of the fields. The last load has about 65 bales on it and we just parked it in the machine shed. We are going to save that for Mr Rainman to unload as he was otherwise occupied this weekend and we did not want him to miss out on the fun. We ended up with aching bodies and torn blisters. I had three torn blisters between my fingers from the hay hooks. I just worked the Gingerman into the ground. He stated that his normal physical conditioning the last several years has been bringing a cheeseburger to his mouth. He was still able to throw bales overhead so we could stack them.

We both alternated water and Gatorade but that evening I got a horrible cramp in my lower thigh. Usually, I drink some liquid IV to keep the cramps away. I ended up having to drink it before bedtime so I didn’t get woken up by a horrific cramp. I did not get a cramp in the middle of the night.

On our last trip back to the house we heard coyotes and spotted a den across the field. There are a few holes in the rock bluff that occasionally the coyotes use for dens. We did not have a den last year when we lost all the sheep. We came back with two rifles and the Gingerman ended up killing three coyotes, I got none! Wife says I may need to start practicing. I will have to get the reloader up and running before I can do that. There are still two coyotes left. Gingerman also shot a raccoon the night before down at the Mother-in-law’s house. So for 2024 Farm 4, Predators 0.

We got all of the hay bales picked up that I wanted to from the field. We left about 60 bales but they are filled with about half cheatgrass. We will pick those up and toss onto the burn pile if I cannot give them away. I don’t want the cheat grass seed to sit out in the field.

I went out Sunday morning and raked all the loose hay towards the outer edge of the field. The animals can eat at the piles later and the piles will keep the cheat grass at bay. The cheat grass is on the outer edges of the field. I wanted to clear the field as we are supposed to get 1/4-1/2” of rain Sunday-Monday. I am hopeful that the grass will take off and I may be able to get a second cutting. Who knows, we will cut again on Wednesday or Thursday morning. I would like to do it on Wednesday. But the sickle bar mower is missing two teeth and now that I have the parts I will need to fix that this week. Haying is just keeping after it till its done, it never ends during the duration.

Haying by moonlight

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Mr Rainman came out this week on Tuesday and turned the cut grass from field one so I could have the pleasure of baling it all. I had a neighbor call me and ask about cutting their field. I ended up just going over and cutting it and then raked it after work and then baled it after work. It is beautiful grass hay. I was able to get about 1.6 tons off of their 3 acres. I had to work fast to get it all done before the sun went down as the external lights on my John Deere are dead. It also gets cold once the sun goes down. I was at the neighbors finishing up and it started to get cold and I realized my vest was no longer on the back of my seat. I happened to look over and spotted by vest inside a bale of hay! I had to cut the bale open and unroll it to get my vest out. Surprisingly, the jacket was just dirtier than normal, it did not have any tears in it.

I then ended up staying up till midnight on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night trying to get all of the hay baled from field one that we had cut. I was supposed to only cut half the field but I think I cut about 70% of the field instead!

On Friday I had puppy duty so we went to town early to get dog food and chicken food then he had to stay on the breeze porch for three hours while I baled hay. I came back around 1400 and we went to town for tractor parts. I knew I needed to drive the pickup in the am but could not remember why so I took the car, I remembered when I got to town that I needed to pickup tractor parts. The puppy thought he was dying by having to spend three hours on the porch. He cannot run around outside because the man lift is in use and there is no way you could not run over him if he was outside. He has no fear of the equipment.

At 1600 I went back out and baled. The baler was causing me problems and not rolling bales well. I opened up the side and realized the main gear chain was loose and I could no longer adjust the tightness any more, my adjuster was adjusted to the maximum. I drove back to the house as it was getting dark and worked on shortening the chain. Mr Gingerman came out to help me and the progeny held the light. I still have not gotten the machine shed lights wired up yet. I am closer but I need to get it finished. We ended up taking out three links. Should have done 4-5. While we were fixing the chain, of course it had to be totally removed, it was discovered that I had better order a full set of gears as the teeth on some are pretty worn. That is going to be expensive. I have two gears already I believe, so I will need to generate a parts list first before calling for replacements. If they have to come from Italy it will take 30-45 days unless I air mail them and I don’t need them that bad.

Gingerman worked on the 1957 brakes and got them working well enough to safely drive the beast to a shop and have the brakes fully worked over. So I will be adding that to the list next week. He did say there is a radiator leak also. Who would have guessed after sitting idle for 25+ years? So that will need to be added to the list. I have still not figured out how to install new side window felt to keep the windows from rattling around and braking. You Tube is not helping me there. I need to get those repaired before I can start using the truck, I am afraid I will just beat/brake the windows from driving around on the rough ground unless it is repaired.

I went back out to bale some more and it worked much better but the grass is getting too dry, 8% moisture and its just so slick that it does not want to roll up well. I need to put a few more gripper strips on the rollers to get it to form better bales. At midnight I just gave up, there was about another three hours of baling left, if everything worked normal which it was not. I was dumping more bales than I could get formed and wrapped. Besides after three nights working 19-20 hour days I was was wearing down.

Can we mow?

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All I wanted to do on Sunday was mow cheatgrass. We had to bend out part of the metal skirt on the mower on Saturday and after mowing into the dark I had managed to bend it back. Mr Rainman said we had better fix it before going out to mow as we would just have to fix it again the next day. So we broke out the welder and grinder and then really looked at the mower. Wow! After 15 years the poor mower has cracks, bends and broken stuff all over the frame. We tried to bend the skirt but even with pipe wrenches we could not get it back in place. We had to split the skirt with a grinder cutting blade and bend smaller pieces. I would then attempt to weld them back together.

I did wear heavy leather gloves, arm and chest protection. I still managed to drop hot metal on my ankle by sitting too close to the welding. We had to cut a few filler metal pieces that I welded in place. I was also able to weld some of the cracks closed. I am still having trouble at time with making holes and then not being able to fill them. I keep getting a little better at welding every time I do it. I don’t expect to ever be an expert but in a couple of years I will be passing. Currently, I would rate my welding skill as good enough to hold stuff together. Welding overhead is not very fun and requires a lot more technique. This took a couple of hours to complete.

I am trying to use up all of the different types of spray paint I have on hand so color matching an item is not really a concern. Once I get all the extra used up I will keep green and black on hand. For now I am just getting a coat of paint on to help provide some needed rust protection.

The mower worked like a champ after that when I went out and mowed. After working on it last year and this year I am hoping to be able to ignore it for another five years. I do recommend eye protection as the rubber guard on the intake area is no more and occasionally stuff comes flying out.

660/900 mini round bales

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Well we survived the international flight and made it home. I was ready to be done with vacation, we saw some amazing things but home is the best, even the brown desert of Eastern Oregon. As we pulled into the driveway at 1000 there was a “dead” black colored sheep out in the orchard. It was flat, neck stretched out and belly looked a little bloated so I added carcass disposal to my list of tasks to be completed immediately.

I had to check on chickens, baby chicks, upper sheep (feeders), upper cows, bull in Alcatraz, our new bull, lower sheep (momma, babies and ram), cats, dogs, horse and alpaca. I even drove out to the orchard with the tractor to pickup the “dead” sheep and discovered that it was gone, it had been merely sunning itself. The alpaca can look dead also if you don’t really look at them carefully when they are sunbathing. No one died while we were gone!

I went out to look at the grass hay that was still on the ground. It was pretty dry but it needed to be rowed again so I could bale it early Saturday. It was way too hot to bale any hay, there needs to be some moisture or else the grass is too slick and it won’t roll up into a round bale. Of course since we were still on vacation time change a nap was required!

Saturday I went out at 0530 and baled until about 0830 when it got too hot. Another nap was required and we went to a wedding and visited friends. I am truly going to take my actual vacation this time and try and rest. Sunday, I was up at 0430 and had the rest of the field baled and ready to go by 0745. Mr Flow came over and we picked up all of the hay in the field and got it into the barn. We stacked it up and got most of the bales that were still drying out moisture checked and into the barn. We had about 15 bales that had to be turned and six that need to be fed to the bull in Alcatraz, they are never going to dry out.

We did some work picking up stuff at my mother’s house then started digging the footings for the back bridge. This was not easy as we kept hitting scrap metal pieces and rocks. Once the footings are dug I will build them up with wood so we can pour some concrete. The back creek is almost dry again. It happens every year and even as dry as it is it still has a little water in it. I suspect it will be bone dry by the end of July. We need to get the bridge in so I can make an area in the wood shed to hang all of our bee frames and store all of our extra bee boxes. This will keep them all contained to one area and easy to find.