Quiet One

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.

It’s all fun and games till pickup time

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Well I spent most of Friday being a mechanic. I was able to bale hay for a while until I had the baler explode again. Same problem, one of the entire rows of pickup tines gave out when I tried to push a huge clump into the baler. This of course got jammed inside the baler and I was done. So then I proceeded to tear the baler apart again except this time I broke one pickup tine on the left side and an entire row on the right side. So I had to take off all of the pickup guidance channels but three. Of course I had three bolts that I could not loosen. Those hex key heads might be smooth for the incoming grass but there is no room inside the baler to really put some English on the bolt and I had to grind off three more bolt heads. Luckily, they were not any of the bolts I had just installed last week. I am sure that the bolts are kinda welding themselves to the channels with rust. Once I grind off the heads I can turn the lower part of the bolt with my fingers. I am even hosing them with some penetrating lubricant prior to attempting their removal. Luckily, I performed no blood sacrifice on their removal. My hands are still trying to heal from the first attempt.

I wanted to use the tractor to haul the trailer instead of the pickup. There is a tight corner at the far end and there is no reason to use the pickup. Unfortunately, I could not find the correct bar with a 2 5/8” ball mounted on it. I ended up chaining it to a three point bar. Not exactly secure but it lasted for two days and I ordered a premade three point hitch with a 2” receiver for a stinger so I can use a 2 5/8” ball and the trailer will be secure. I ordered it on Saturday and it should arrive by Monday, that is pretty fast! So on Saturday Annmarie and I went out and started to pickup bales out of the field and unload them into the barn. I only turned about 75% of the bales in field one and it was noticeable. We had some wet soldiers so those got set outside the barn on their side to dry. They will be fed to the boys in Alcatraz and the yearlings in the orchard. Nothing goes to waste. Every time we picked up a load we grabbed two bales that had to be dumped and were not wrapped. Those go to animals in Alcatraz, orchard or the horse. We made four trips to pickup hay and unloaded three loads into the barn (191 bales). The two of us got 4 ton loaded into the barn on Saturday and one ton of soldiers drying out (51 bales).

We were able to get a great view of the new calf. I ended up dumping six bales off the side of the trailer right near the gate and the cows got free food. She was very visible.

On Sunday I went to TJ Hooker’s house and sheared his alpaca. I ended up shearing it standing up. I only cut it once, but it had not been shorn ever and it was three years old so it was a little wild. I was able to trim its toes and even had to grind its teeth straight. I did not need to cut off its fighting teeth as they were quite small. I will probably have to do that next year. I told him to not wait so long. I am still trying to decide if trading shearing for fencing material is a realistic business proposition.

Afterwards I went home to pickup more bales of hay. The Quiet One and Rock Slayer came out to help. We unloaded the load waiting for us into the barn and it was time to take the stack from 8 feet height to 16 feet, that top half is the hardest! The Quiet One did most of the crawling around on top of the bales while the Rock Slayer and I tossed them up to her. We picked up five more loads and put three of them into the barn. We added another 7 ton of hay into the barn and then stacked another 3 ton over by the grain bins. Rock Slayer had to leave but the Quiet One was game to keep going until we picked up all the bales. We had to make three more trips to get all of the bales. We did open up field two so the cows can get in there and eat the downed unbaled hay and eat the green grass. Field one is all closed up and if we get more rain I may get a second cutting off of field one.

We did stop and look at the Gingerman’s hive up outside of field one. It is still alive and kicking. Not a ton of bees but they are working and are present. They were pretty calm, I picked the lid off without any protection and peeked inside the hive.

We ended up piling another 435 bales or 8.7 tons of hay over by the grain bins. The bales weigh around 40# so they can be thrown and moved easily but after 1000 bales it starts to add up! I did learn that I can only throw the bales about ten feet into the air. I just cannot get any higher. I only ended up with three blisters between my fingers from the hay hooks. Even with gloves those parts of my hand don’t get a lot of friction. I do change out which fingers the hooks go between on a regular basis in an attempt to slow down the blisters.

Overall, I am super excited about the hay. I had a neighbor offer up about 3-4 more acres to cut and I still need to cut down by the schoolhouse plus I still have a second cutting on the Naked Gardener’s property. We are going to not purchase any hay this year for the cows and feed out what we have. I will need to get the hay rearranged in the machine shed so I can put more small bales in there. I also need to fix the wall of the old lamb shed so that I can stick bales in there for the winter. It’s a good hay year.

Getting lucky

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By the third dayI figured that a little bit of sunscreen on my face was not going to help if I spent all day on the tractor again. I had already managed to sunburn my lips. I took the, still in the box, sunshade that had been purchased for the older Kubota (Clementine) and installed it on the new one (Juicy). It took a couple of hours to get it all pieced together and up on the tractor. This one has a very nice locking mechanism that virtually makes it impossible for the shade to blow off the tractor. It is quite clever. After baling hay for an hour I asked myself why I did not do that two days earlier! Keeping that direct sun off of your face is a huge relief.

The hydraulic takeoffs do work! I only need one to get the dump lid on the baler to work and it worked great once I got the port all cleaned up. It had a lot of dust and dried grass in it. Unfortunately, I did order dust caps but do not order them by the size of the plug. They are ordered by the size of the hose. I did not know that until the wrong ones arrived in the mail. The correct size is now on order.

I spent all of Sunday baling hay until 2330. I really wanted to keep baling but we had scheduled help to come out on Monday at 0800 and help us with shear the alpaca. The haying got a lot easier once the sun went down. The moisture started to come out and the grass was not as slick. It baled super nice, no jams and it just wound up without any difficulties. I made twice as much progress after darkness hit. I started to just pick the big rows to bale as it was so fast. I figured I could get the smaller rows after we sheared the alpaca.

We had four alpaca that I had managed to get pinned on the back hillside. I thought they would cross the back creek. Nope, I ended up taking a header into the creek when the alpaca I was attempting to drag across the creek suddenly jumped and scrambled up the opposite side. Of course that same alpaca ended up jumping back across the creek to be with his buddies. One of the babies kicked Annmarie in the lower leg. It was a solid blow. That same alpaca proceeded to try and give us all the rear kick anytime we walked up behind it. So we grabbed it from the side when we drug it into the shearing area. It has grown significantly, it is probably our biggest alpaca now.

We did eventually get all four alpaca across the creek and I did not end up in it again. We only have six to shear, trim feet and inspect/cut teeth.

The shearing table makes it pretty easy to do everything. Our helper, the Quiet One, had never sheared alpaca before but she had just paid someone to come out to her place and shear her two alpaca. It was decided that she can just bring hers over to our place and we can just shear all of them on the same day. We had all six done within three hours. After three days of riding on the tractor my upper shoulders were killing me but I am getting much faster at shearing the alpaca than I used to when I started. I passed the trimmer off to the wife and Quiet One but ended up going back to it as I wanted to be done. I only cut three of them with the razor. No stitches have ever been necessary.

We dragged a tarp with the last two years worth of discarded hair over to the garden so we can use it as weed barrier. It makes great barrier. I showed the Quiet One how to work the new tractor and she will come out and mow the cheat grass down during the week. It needs it. I have been trying to mow the cheat grass while haying but once I started to bale nothing else gets done until hay is all formed into round bales. Once the bales are made I will leave them in the field for a couple of weeks. This is why I like the round bales so much better. They work for my delayed schedule.

I called in to the house and the wife brought me coffee out to the field! It was one of the best cups of coffee ever. I needed that coffee. Going around and around and watching the baler is monotonous. Even if I did manage to knock out two audio books over the weekend.

I went out and started to bale for another seven hours. I had enough material on the ground for approximately 12 more bales when the big boom was heard. The shear nut gave on the baler and I tried to replace it. I could not get the baler tines to move so I figured I better look closer to see what made that noise. One of the pickup tines exploded and broke some stuff that pinned the pickup shaft solid. I need three hours to tear into it and replace all the parts. It is close enough to finished to call it finished!

I now have to fix the sickle bar mower, the rake and the baler before I can cut some more hay. My plan is to fix the mower, cut hay, then fix the rake, rake and then fix the baler! As long as I get it fixed before I need it I am good to go.