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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stewart Creek Somethings 