Unloading in the heat

Awesome Grass Hay

Only got 70 bales but the quality is awesome. So green it looks artificial.

What happens when your tractor cab is too quiet? Anything, and you'll never hear it. I had a shaft pop off of my hay mower but I never hear it crashing around inside of the mower the other night. When I went to stop at around 9PM I looked the mower over and discovered that the shaft was missing and the hydraulic pump that drives the main conditioning rollers was leaking fluid. The parts should be here today to make the needed repairs, and needless to say it was an expensive cost to have such a nice quiet cab.

Orchard Grass, Alfalfa, Clover Hay

To day is the day we take our first cutting of our orchard grass, alfalfa, clover hay. It is plenty thick, but since I don't know how it will react to being cut I'm planning on cutting it kind of high. The honey bees won't know what to do without all of the clover flowers, but it should make some pretty hay. And this week looks great for it until Friday, if the weather man is to be believed...

First veg sighting of 2012

We spotted our first tomatoes and zucchini today. They must have been on the plants for a few days, but today is the first day that I got down on my knees and really looked at several of the plants. The first tomatoes take a long time to grow and ripen, but the squash usually fires off pretty quickly so I guess it shouldn't be too long until some produce starts coming.

Mink

A mink got into the chickens night-time predator-proof pen and killed 3 chickens. We thought it was a skunk. No big deal (other than we're sold out of this batch of chickens and we don't want to lose any but...) we just need to set a live trap to catch it. But during the day when the chickens are loose on the pasture George was out working on the high tunnel and saw the chickens running wildly and squawking across the field. He yelled for someone to get a gun and took off toward the chickens with the shovel he was using. He eventually found a mink chasing the chickens and dispatched it with his shovel.

Going High Tech Weather

I decided to get a weather station that I can connect to the home computer to start trying to get more detailed in connecting weather variables to farm processes.  You can check out our weather on Weather Underground. 

First Hay Cutting with New Rollers

Yesterday was a great day for cutting hay.  I got to try my new rollers from B&D Rollers that I installed over the winter.  Everything worked great except that I didn't tighten a bolt tight enough when I put everything back together this winter and a u-joint shaft fell off while I was running.  Not a big deal, but I'm sure I would have been more upset if I would have had someone else do the install and the part fell off while I was running.  It's not the first time and I always hope that I remember that when things do go wrong after someone has done work on something.