Lost Hay

Yesterday we spent some time wiring my brother's tractor to run my round baler. We ran the power to the wrong side of the tractor and found that we weren't getting enough voltage, so we re-ran the wires and finally got enough power to run the computer monitor for the baler. Then we got out to his "hay". He has about 11 acres of alfalfa and he had cut his hay just before the rain started which was about 2 weeks before I cut over on my place. It rained so much that his hay eventually was no good to even bale. It wouldn't dry down and it eventually molded. He also had an enormous amount of corn stover. So we baled the "hay" to get it off of the field and let the alfalfa grow again. We spent some time testing the baler's functions at the same time since the bales were not going for sale or feed. Now Tim and my son George are experts on running the baler. I also know what I need to talk to the John Deere dealer about in regard to my baler.

Whew! First Cutting Alfalfa In The Books

As you can see from the posts, the alfalfa has been cut for what seemed like an eternity. It rained off and on and kept me going to the field thinking today is the day that I'll finally be able to get the hay up, only to have it rain or get too humid to dry it down enough to bale. I talked to a neighbor yesterday. He and his father came buy to talk about our oat hay. Anyway we both thought that we were going to bale on Tuesday at about 2PM. But at 12 noon it rained. Guess everyone in our area had the same problems. It feels good to have it finally up and out of the way. I think we got about 32 tons off of the field. Since this hay was rained on I'll use this hay to feed to my cows over the winter. It's not that I couldn't sell it, it came off the field nice and dry and the leaves stayed on it really well, but I'd rather use the hay for myself and only sell the best hay. We did figure out that you can only put 11 round bales on my trailer without straps. I rounded the corner of the field onto the gravel road and half of the trailer load went into the ditch. We only have to pull round bales out of the ditch once to know that I don't want to have to do that again.

Still Trying To Do Hay

We were able to get some grass hay up this weekend. We had cousins visiting - one from Maryland and one from Colorado. They arrived on Saturday afternoon and once they had unloaded their luggage at my brothers they came down to the hayfield we were working. They missed doing square bales, but I did get them in the tractor to try rolling a round bale. It is a lot of fun to get someone behind the wheel of a tractor for the first time and to run a round baler down the field. We windrow our hay narrow enough that we have to switch back and forth across the windrow to make an even bale. If you have never run a tractor, or you haven't run one in years, it can be a challenge to coordinate all of the activities required to make a nice bale. They made some very nice bales and we didn't run anything over we didn't want to, so it was a success.
My son Tom who is 10 and I raked alfalfa hay this morning. This morning was one of those mornings that had heavy dew on the ground, blue sky above and made the hay smell so sweet. It was a joy to share that opportunity with my son. He did a great job too. Now if it will only dry I can get it off the field and can get on to other jobs like cutting the oats and working on the well.

Back in Business

After breaking the front end of the tractor, what should have been a simple fix turned into a multi-day extended repair. The part that broke - a tie rod - comes in 3 parts. There is an inner ball joint, an outer ball joint and the rod that "ties" it all together. Since I only popped the outer ball joint I ordered an outer and it arrived the next day. When I went to get the old outer out, it wouldn't budge. Even after heating and using the biggest wrenches I have available. So I ordered the inner. Unfortunately I assumed that the inner would also come with the rod. My mistake. When the inner came the next day with only the inner I decided to try again to get the ball joints loose from the rod. After several hours of frustrating pounding, heating, and multiple vise acrobatics I had to give up and order the other part. That arrived the next day and I was able to get the part back on and have the tractor running in about 10 minutes. Of course I ended up paying for shipping 3 times. It was a knuckle head tax! Once the tractor was back running I turned the alfalfa hay over yesterday evening to get it to dry down some more. It was a beautiful evening. You may be able to see the rainbow in the background of the picture.
Today is supposed to be sunny so the hay should dry down quite a bit. Won't be dry enough to bale but it will dry enough that I may be able to bale tomorrow afternoon if it doesn't rain.

Today I'll be baling grass hay on a place northwest of here. I've been hauling rake, hay rack, baler and tractor this morning. We'll rake shortly and it should be ready to bale this afternoon.

Hay and Chores

This week has started a heavy hay week. We have 3 fields down across the county. One field of alfalfa at my brothers at the far north end of the county, another about midway up the county of grass, and a 28 acre field of alfalfa here. Of course the rain has started again so it looks like we won't get the hay up until the end of the week. I started cutting yesterday and got a couple of passes around the field when a tie rod end popped off of my tractor. The tie rod hooks the steering to the wheels. I couldn't quite understand why I was sliding so much til I looked down and saw one wheel steering left and the other right. I called my brother Tim and asked him if he wanted to cut some hay. I went up with my truck and a trailer and picked up his tractor. Tim finished cutting the hay well after dark. It had to come down, rain or no rain. The alfalfa was pretty close to full bloom so it was time. Next we will be cutting oat hay. We have about 50 acres of oats that are a nurse crop to the alfalfa. The nurse crop is crowding out the weeds allowing the alfalfa to grow to a size that will then keep the weeds crowded out on its own. One exciting event this morning during chores was notable. We were moving the cows across the pasture as part of our rotational grazing and one of the steers that is in their own part of the pasture decided it wanted to be in the company of the cows bad enough that it jumped the string fence. It wasn't able to jump the next string that would have allowed it in with the cows, but since we've never had any of our cattle jump the string fence it was notable. We ended up moving the steers and bull back into the paddock and we'll start the process of feeding the steers toward finishing them. The bull will be along for the ride with the steers until he's ready to go back out into the pasture with the cows later in the summer.

Calving - Avert Your Eyes If You're Squeamish!

The cows are really dropping calves now! We have really been blessed with a great calving season. We have all heifers except for one bull calf. Heifers mean we are growing our herd for the long term rather than getting bull calves that would be for short term sale. We got to watch 2 cows have calves at practically the same time. It is amazing but may not be something for the squeamish to see.

Things Break But The Farm Work Still Moves On

Like any other business things break. When they break on the farm most of the time it is up to us to fix them. Things have been extremely busy, and when things break it just adds to the excitement and pace. This past week we had a leak the main well line that we use to water our animals and our vegetables. For a while we just couldn't figure out what was going on with our well. We finally broke down and decided to call the well man. While talking to him on the phone we found the leak. The water line that is down about six feet had rubbed on the well liner and caused a leak that constantly ran the well and kept the well low enough that any major water use dropped the well water below the well pickup that caused the well to run out of water. While this was on going hay needed to be baled and chicken pens needed to be built. As the hay was being baled I had barely made a bale when the drive chain on the tractor that connects the engine to the transmission broke. So as a classic multitasking challenge I rented a backhoe and dug the water line up while waiting for the hay to dry. Then when the hay was dry enough and started to bale the chain broke on the tractor and that had to be fixed so we had to get some parts that could fix the chain. The chain repair was a study in persistence and frustration. Getting a simple pin into a chain seems so simple, until the chain is in the middle of the tractor, under the cab and requiring exact alignment and placement, covered in grease, with almost no space. I ended up using a bench grinder to make things fit. It is kind of like using a sledge hammer to make thing fit. Sometimes it's requirement but you only use it as a last resort. In the end the tractor was fixed and I was able to scrub all of the grease off of me, the water line was patched, the hay was baled, and we're still building pens.