microhay equipment

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.

Beautiful spring day

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Saturday was amazing, the sun was shining and it was a near perfect day. Since it was going to rain on Sunday we opted to just make it a work outside only day. Once the sheep were done we started to look for my set of small discs. Mr Rainman and I went all over the farm. We could not find them anywhere. I ended up mowing all around the upper CRP field. I mowed down by four corners but hit a buried baling twine bundle and had to take thirty minutes to cut it out of the mower blades.

The kids brought down a bunch of concrete from their remodel. We are going to use it to help stabilize the bank. It keeps getting eroded by the seeps, water and sheep. They have at least three more loads and I think that will make a great addition to this corner. We should be able to stop the corner from falling in.

The seven yearling cows that will be sold or eaten this fall got pushed down by four corners. They are in amongst the trees. We are going to start killing the cheat grass in the two fields near the mother-in-law’s house. We hope to get water on them so we can keep getting the cheat grass to sprout then kill it and start the process over.

I was able to sell five, one year old lambs this weekend ($120 each) so there are seven left to sell by this fall. It was very easy as we just pulled them off as we wormed the entire herd. They came and picked them up a couple of hours later. We just ran them out into the corral and down the chute into their horse trailer. The corral makes loading animals very easy.

The gate gremlins were out in force this weekend. The teenager cows got out of the lower pasture the gate was open. The horse got out of the barn lot, the gate was open. The horse got into the ran pasture with the sheep and was trying to eat the green grass, the gate was open. The surprising part of this is that each gate was left open by a different person! No one was harmed and the animals did just fine. This stuff happens.

I was able to get down to field one and mow the newly made ditch. Mr Rainman spotted some fresh coyote prints in the mud. We have not seen any yet this season but they are obviously out there. I went to the other side of the creek and worked on getting it mowed down. I managed to get the huge hole filled in! That has been there for over 25 years. Someone buried two huge track backhoes in there and spent three days trying to get them out. They left a huge hole that was never filled in. The edges of the hole were straight walled and over eight feet high. It is not safe to drive the tractor in that area without knowing exactly where you going and where the hole is located. I got the entire thing filled in and now anyone can safely go back there and mow it down as needed. That has been on my list for over 15 years and I just never got around to doing it. Usually, when I wanted to do it the ground was so hard that I could not move the dirt. I even used the little John Deere 2520 to do it.

Sunday I was able to work on the baler. Unfortunately, I am missing two parts. One that never got sent to me and one I think I sent back accidentally when I sent back the wrong sprockets. I am pretty sure that one is on me. I have the part numbers written down and will get them ordered first thing on Monday. Otherwise, all of the other parts are all installed, tightened and adjusted. I can get those two parts and the new chain on in less than 90 minutes. Mr Rainman did remind me that we may need to do some maintenance on the sickle bar mowers before we use them. I think I have all the parts for those already.

Winter hay ready

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Yesterday was the start of the Pendleton Roundup. The Gingerman and my wife were in the parade playing with the mounted band. I opted to go out and work on the Abbriata M50 round baler. I still need to get the chain sprockets replaced. I had more parts sent last month so I was going to install them. I could not get this double sprocket assembly off of the drive shaft. I had the gear puller maxed out! I finally took the gear puller off, separated the gears, as I had managed to move them 3/8”. I then pulled off the first gear and it had a key! But the second gear did not have a key, so I was trying to pull the rear gear against the key. It came right off after I removed the key. There is not a written instruction manual.

I went to put the new gear on and it doesn’t fit. I need a 2.5 cm hole in the gear not a 3 cm. Also, after closer inspection all of my large gears should only be 2.5 cm deep not 3 cm. I think they will work but the nut holding them in place used to be flush with the bolt and now it will be 1/2cm out from the end of the bolt. My dad was a machinist and he used to tell me that you only need the nut to go on far enough to be 1/2 the diameter of the bolt and you have gained maximum strength from the nut. That is exactly what I will have if I have to use those. I am calling the parts place tomorrow so we can go through the list again! I am going to send some parts back. As always I hate being a mechanic. I am capable of figuring it out but it’s never easy. Luckily, since all the equipment is made in Italy and no one else knows I am in good company. I have one more tool box coming so that I can create a Metric and nonmetric (US standard) tool box. I am tired of digging around and trying to find the right size and type.

Once the Gingerman showed up with his large tractor he started to stack the bales into the machine shed. While he did that I started to stack the extras on the backside of the machine shop. It took a couple of hours to get the bales loaded up. He was able to get half the bales into the machine shed. I will use from the outside pile first and by January I will be able to use the protected bales from the machine shed.

Farm projects progressing

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The siding contractor is done with the siding. We just need our gutter fixed and a screen replaced. Mr Rainman has been working on getting our porch ceiling painted. He used a thick primer to fill in the gaps between the boards. We thought about painting it white but were afraid it would be hard to match our siding. Annmarie remembered the porch ceiling being blue when she was a kid. I had to look up why blue and the reasons vary quite a bit. It was supposed to keep away evil spirits, it represented the sky so it made the porch feel bigger and it repelled bugs. We are going with the first one.

Primer done
First coat

The annual barn clean out has been happening over the last two weekends. Mr Rainman started it by getting a main path dug all the way through the barn (5 hours). I have worked on it two more days a four hour day and a three hour day. We have managed to get most of the barn dug out in 12 hours! This used to take 40-60 hours to do. We started earlier this year and it is really wet still inside the barn, so there are no hard sheets of dried stuff. It is scrap-able with the manure forks. I took the forks off yesterday and used the bucket to scrape the muddy material loose and then just leave it to dry for a while. Mr Rainman had ambitions of finishing it next week. The rest all needs to be hand dug. It should take about six hours.

Beginning spot

We will have gotten the whole thing done in under 20 hours which is pretty amazing. I keep getting better and better with the little John Deere tractor. I think the real reason is I don’t want to get off and pitch fork as much crap as I used to, before becoming more aged. I am getting more efficient as I age!

We have been having some trouble with random people coming down the driveway. We had installed a ring camera this year and are now having to monitor it. For some reason we have someone on a motorcycle who keeps coming onto the property. Annmarie is making another sign to do down by the driveway cattle guard. Once we have the gazebo up we are going to install a 16’ gate across the driveway down by the first house. Initially, we are going to keep the gate open and only close it when we work the animals. If we keep getting unknown visitors we may have to install a solar automatic opener with a battery backup. This will force everyone to stop and push a button to open the gate. If we install an auto gate opener we will bury an auto sensor from our side that will open the gate so you can leave. I am hoping that we won’t have to do that but when we install the manual gate I will weld new hinges on the gate and install a double post and offset post for latching. This will make the installation of an auto opener very easy.

We got the side fence temporarily back up so the dogs can no longer steal cat food or harass the cats. This week we will start in on the gazebo! This is our next big project. I am thinking it will take us about six weeks to get it all up in the air. We will still need to finish the floor inside, create countertops and an entrance cover and ramp. For now just getting it up with the roof on it is the goal this year.

I had to order more parts for the micro hay baler. I needed another $500 worth of parts and am probably going to have to pop off the wheel on one side to be able to reach all of the gears. I will definitely be ordering a spare chain and will only allow myself to take out links one time before just replacing it. The chain only costs $150, all of the gears are over $2k.