microhay equipment

Haying purgatory

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Saturday was the day of the first hay roundup. Mr Tex had agreed to come out and help buck hay. He doesn’t like working in the heat so he wanted to start at 0600. This is way too early for Mr Professional so Annmarie agreed to drive the pickup and trailer around in circles while we tossed bales onto the trailer. We had to make a plan as there were some bales that had cheat grass in them. Three of the fields look pretty good with very little cheat grass. We decided to use the cheat grass contaminated bales to line the dirt floor of the lamb shed, the triticale could then go on top of it and we would not waste any of it. The triticale we will feed to the cows and the bull in alcatraz. We ended up getting almost 3 ton off of about 3/4 acre in the triangle scab patch we planted the 2 year old leftover triticale seeds in, using a grass seed dispersing cultivator. The quail are everywhere! They are in pairs all up and down the fields, every time we went down the road we spotted several pair.

We were able to get 100 bales per load onto the trailer and pickup. That is two ton per trip. The road alongside the wheat field is the quickest route out to the fields but it slants to toward the downhill side and has one bad spot that was causing the tractors to slide off of the road during all the mud creating rains. I have been slowly trying to flatten that section of road out and it is better but it is not wide enough so the trailer kept slipping off the road and getting dragged sideways for about 50 feet until we could get past that section. It only slid two feet downhill but it is disconcerting when you are looking in your side mirror and see it slide down and stay on the low side. We only dumped hay off once and then only lost six bales. Annmarie helped us unload in the barn. Having an extra person was great once we started having to stack higher than we could reach. I messed up and started to stack the far closest corner up first. I always do the farthest corner first. Its easier and this year I messed it up so now the bales have to be moved an extra 8-16 feet. The temperature was only in the low 80s F. I made sure to drink lots of water but it was hot! We tried to geet the puppy to go with us but she did not like the noise of the pickup so we left her in the yard. She spent most of the day sleeping on the front porch of the house.

We picked up 400 bales and then Mr Tex wanted to take a lunch. He went home, and we had minimart chicken strips and then I laid out on the front lawn and took a nap. I was anticipating the second round of hay bales to be less pleasant than the first 400. My arms were starting to ache but not my shoulders yet. We did another 100 bales then Sarah came home and volunteered to come out and help with hay. We of course allowed this then went back for our last 100 of the day as I was super tired already. The pickup and trailer started to sink into a soft section of the field and four wheel drive was necessary to get out of the spot. The last 100 bales into the barn sucked. We were all tired. After Mr Tex tossed his hay hook with the bale for the fourth time and fell off the trailer once it was fairly evident that even he was tired.

Mr Professional came out and blew out the John Deere radiator, I had forgotten to put the prescreen in so it had a lot more chaff in there than normal. He filled it and checked oil and added oil, both tractors need an oil change so I will be buying filters and getting the oil so we have it on hand. He then went out to bale more hay, therefore adding to the amount that needed to be picked up.

We ended up picking up 600 bales, 12 ton of hay and getting it in the barn for the animals for winter. We need to have both bays in the barn for the sheep to get through the winter so I would say we are have about 40% of the hay we need for winter already.

As soon as we were done I spread out on the front lawn to cool off. I just laid there for 30 minutes attempting to get cooled down. I shared some ice water with the puppy as every time I put the cup down she would shove her entire face into the cup so she could play with the ice cubes. Eventually it was my turn in the shower. I was in bed early and did not feel the greatest. The next day has begun and I still don’t feel that great. My muscles are not in that bad of shape but the headache and runny nose are not going away. So it will be a lighter day today.

The amount of hay is amazing. The rain was annoying and I will need to move a bunch of dirt and create a berm at the beginning of field 1 to prevent the field from being flooded but boy the grass sure liked the bottomless water glass. There is a distressing amount of hay to be cut and baled and picked up out of the fields.

Haying during the week

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Professional came out during the week and worked on equipment and kept haying. We managed to break both sickle bars, there are two special round head bolts that snap fairly easily. I had to call for parts for the new sickle bar and realized that it also was made in Italy! This did not bode well for us but it turns out they had three bolts on hand and could overnight them to the parts store. I had them order two more anyways so we would have spares on hand. I will need to create a new parts bin for the new sickle bar. Having a bin for every piece of equipment is very handy for keeping track of all of the spare parts. I would come home from work, change clothes and jump on a piece of equipment until dark. I could get in 5-6 hours of tractor work doing that. We had some trouble with moisture still as the heat had not picked up yet and the ground was still fairly wet. This caused the baler to jam on a fairly regular basis. We quit picking up so low to the ground and just caught the tops of the rows, this worked well but did leave a couple of inches of cut grass on the ground. There was nothing to do about that as the grass did not cut smoothly to the ground as it was still fairly wet. A mower/conditioner might fix this problem but when the grass is four feet tall I am unsure how well it would carve through the mass of grass.

Every evening I got to watch the quail! Honestly, they are one of my favorite birds. They are curious, vocal and beautiful. We hear them every day all over the farm. At dusk every evening one of the resident owls would come out and start swooping down into the field and catching rodents. They waited until it was almost dark before the hunting started. I have not seen a single deer or turkey this week while out working the fields nor have I seen a pheasant.

I was super tired and have been sleeping downstairs. I get the horrible twitches when I push myself and keep Annmarie awake at night. We have several toads that now live around the house and one has taken up residence under our front porch. It is so annoying that Gizmo, our Brussel griffin dog, has taken to hunting it when the racket commences. I was afraid the noise would keep me awake it was so loud but exhaustion won out and I just fell asleep. We keep telling Gizmo that he really does not want to catch the toad, it would not be healthy for him. I messaged Mr I need a belt bad to see if he wanted to come out and help buck hay but this is the third request I have submitted to him for summer labor and he is not thinking he wants to return to the farm. It is not easy to find a young person who wants to weed, mow, weed eat, dig out ditch and dig out the barn for a summer job. Honestly its only two days a week, maybe three but it is near impossible to find someone. The sheep have been doing all of our yard mowing this year except for the two times we got it mowed. We are still on the lookout for some summer yard assistance.

Haying for real now

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It is officially haying season. I know this because I work from sunup to sundown during haying season. As soon as I get off work in the afternoon I get onto a tractor and go until dark. We had a couple of issues today. Mr Professional was going to use the Kubota and the new sickle bar mower to cut hay but it broke. One asks how does a new piece of equipment break? I would say very easily. We will be using locktite on most of the bolts on the sickle bars. Also, who knew but the new 5 foot sickle bar mower is made in Italy also! I had to download the manual and find the part, the rounded head bolt that kept breaking on our other sickle bar. I found the right part number and called the parts store. I requested five bolts and five nuts. The dealer for these mowers only had three bolts available so they are getting overnighted and we should have them in a couple of days. They are still going to order me two more but those should take 2-3 weeks.

We are going to have to start up another plastic bin of parts for the new mower. Every piece of equipment has a bin now and extra parts are stored in that bin. It makes it a lot less confusing when you know, at least, that the parts do go to that single machine. Mr Professional got about 1/3 of field one cut. Field one has some very fine grass and is drying out quite nicely. The only real problem is it got flooded so there is dirt about 12 inches up on the stalks. So the mower blade is cutting through a lot of dirt. The grass is incredibly tall and thick.

I went up to inspect how much was done by driving up the Mistress with the hay rake on it. I turned a little hay then decided that I needed to row up the hay I had put down on the ground yesterday. One might think that is too early but it is just cut flat and laid down, no rowing at all. The ground is so moist that when I rowed it you could see how much better the hay was going to dry and the ground could dry. It is amazing how wet the ground is still.

I got everything I cut yesterday turned and up into rows. It is supposed to get into the high 80s tomorrow so I am hoping that the hay really starts to dry out. The quail are amazing and everywhere! I must have seen 10 pair of quail running around on my drive out to the field. I hope the rain does not interfere with their egg production because if we have another banner quail baby year we are going to easily break the 300 quail mark on the farm. We think the quail can sustain about 4-500 birds in their society if we feed them through the winter. Time will tell.

Haying begun kinda

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It was been a long week. We had a wonderful weekend away from the farm, which does not occur very often. On Monday, I had to work late and was even later after I went to the supply store and bought woven wire for our yard fence. We have a few more weeks before the puppy arrives and we need a spot to put them initially that is not with all of the bigger dogs, so the side fence has moved up the priority list. We had several boxes on the front porch which turned out to be the wax dipped wood for our honey bee hive. It will need to be assembled. The back gate on the hillside had been left open and once the sheep discovered it they all ran pell mell for the opening. Annmarie went out and got the sheep back in and shut the gate. The back hillside has foot long grass all over it, the sheep are going to be confined to the hillside for quite some time.

Mr Professional and Mr Flex have been coming out all week to work on odds and ends and to get the hay equipment ready. Mr Professional fixed the gear inside the baler, which means I need to explore an overhead lift capable of handling 4000 pounds. It needs to be easy and safe to work on equipment. Mr Flex got the annual chicken coop cleaning done, this is never a pleasant chore. They started in on skirting the old building and our lawn got mowed twice in the same day to get the height down off of the highest mower setting. We could never get ahead of the lawn, it is very prolific this year due to all of the moisture. Mr Professional got our bee hive assembled and the rest of the parts came this week so I set it out where we are going to keep it. I need to turn the entrance so it is unobstructed. This will also put the entrance so it is visible from the kitchen window. I expect us to do a lot of bee watching this year.

We have had so much rain that the barn door warped and cupped inwards. It would not shut once Annmarie got it open. It really needs a little metal bolted to the outside to slow down the warpage. I had to go out and force it shut. It is already starting to go back to its normal shape due to some dry days this week. We got some scrap metal a couple of weeks ago and one or two of those pieces may work to keep the warpage down.

Mr Professional started cutting around the machine shop to test out the new sickle bar mower for the new tractor. I spent one entire evening into the dark turning the cut hay down by the schoolhouse. There is a lot of cheat grass down there, this makes the hay garbage but where we baled the cheat grass last year there is less cheat grass this year and more orchard grass. So we are going to keep removing it from the fields in hopes that we can decrease its abundance. We will over plant with orchard grass also. This seems to be decreasing the amount of cheat grass that is present. It is a battle but if we keep after it I think we can win. We did not cut any of the upper good looking fields because we knew it was supposed to rain all weekend long. Despite that we managed to get 99 good grass round mini bales into the barn for the winter. We are putting them up a lot wetter this year as we had some serious drying out issues last year. We just baled way too late last year after putting the grass on the ground. So we will cut smaller sections this year and not get so far ahead. Yesterday, when I came home I spent three hours helping pick up hay and get it into the barn. I never managed to get changed into farm clothes as I drove right to the field from work. I definitely need some more new gloves. I forgot what it was like to move hay with holy gloves. We feed 4-5 bales every day in the winter to the sheep.

The cows have started having babies. We had a dead calf already, not sure how it died, maybe drowned in the stream where we found it. We have two live ones maybe? Annmarie and Mr Professional claim two, I have only seen one so far. The mothers are notorious for hiding them for the first 30 days. We have opened up the fields near the mother in law’s house in hopes that the cows will bring their babies into the field and we can shut them all in.

The plan is to work on the office this weekend due to the rain. This is bad for the haying side of the farm but good for office progress!!

Haying forever

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been an incredibly long week. I am supposed to make several posts and spread out all this information but honestly, I just don’t have time. The weather is against us, we are under a “heat dome” now and it is currently 108F. It is supposed to get to 115 and may last for at least ten days. It is absurd, our heat pump is not keeping up so we are at 75 degrees inside the house it may get to 80 by the end of the week. It is definitely not the pleasant 72 degrees we usually keep the house at during the summer.

I did have a lot of help off and on throughout the week. Mr Rain Man came out at 0530 on Tuesday to help me with baling of the hay in field #1. I had no idea how much hay was in that field. I think we are going to get about 3.25 ton/acre. It is our best performing field for sure. The problem is we keep hitting moisture issues and its making it hard to bale. Mr Rain Man had never ran any equipment this small but due to the heat he could only work until around 1100 in the morning. He did this for two mornings until he got a piece of something in his eye and had to spend a couple of days irrigating it. I blame the contact lenses. He came out on Saturday to help move a little hay.

I managed to bale hay for a few hours one evening. We have over 800 bales on the ground and have still not managed to get all of the loose hay baled yet. The front porch is a dream, I have been focusing on trying to get the hay bales off of the field and into the barn. But its taking so long due to the heat that the porch is on hold for at least two more weeks. Annmarie and I are actually going to leave town for a week. I ended up working all day at my paying job on Friday so was unable to do any farm work.

Mr Professional came out and got the hay rake repaired and welded together one late night after it cooled off. No one wants to work in the heat, its miserable.

Mr Rain Man, Mr CrossFit and Mr I Need a Belt Bad all came out on Saturday. Mr Rain Man came out at 0530 and started baling hay. Mr I Need a Belt Bad came out at 0730 and spent about 45 minutes weeding the back garden. He forgot to bring a long sleeve shirt and he knew we were going to pickup some hay. It’s going to be a miserable day. We grabbed the pickup and went out and started to fill it up with bales. Mr Rain Man went back to the house with us as he was just not getting the hay to feed right. All of us unloaded hay, I did more supervising than working. I did provide some verbal instructions for Mr I Need a Belt Bad related to inertia and lifting with shoulders and using a knee to keep the bale moving. This “feedback” was continued for two days to give him an edge. It’s hard to keep up without using all the available muscles to the best of your advantage. He is starting to catch on. He should have it down by the time we get all the hay done!

Mr CrossFit and I worked on getting three 3’ wide barrier cloths installed between the raspberries and blackberries. We did this after moving hay on Saturday. We had plans to set the lower railing posts in concrete also but after doing the barrier cloth it was too hot to do any more work. Annmarie wanted to cut down on the weeds and it just so happened that one of my coworkers was getting rid of some rubber bark! There was enough donated rubber to do about 2.5 barriers and we used a few bags of leftover from the lavender patch. We only have about 7 bags unopened now and I will need to put them out on the lavender patch so the sun doesn’t eat the bags.

Sunday, Mr CrossFit and Mr I need a Belt Bad unloaded a pickup load into the barn and then we got two more loads. Mr Professional and a helper came out Saturday night and loaded in 110 bales into the barn. We got another 3 + ton into the second barn bay today, so 5+ ton into the barn in the last 24 hours. There was so much hay that the last load we closed the lower doors on the barn and opened up the upper doors. The hay had to be tossed up to the overhead opening. That electric 16’ hay elevator really needs to get repaired! Tossing them by hand is not easy and Mr CrossFit was moving as fast as he could to get the bales loaded as high as possible. Mr I Need a Belt Bad took more instruction. He is hanging in there. Honestly, hard work and perseverance are the key to success and should be fostered. As long as he keeps working and trying he is welcome to come out. After we get the hay in we will need to start digging out the barn, which is a miserable and smelly endeavor. I would not say that I am the easiest boss to work for, I do provide instruction and set expectations and provide feedback. The feedback can be colorful but it does get the point across.