Harrow in the hayfield

I spent Friday going in circles at 5 mph. And sometimes eating dust. Yup, I drug my harrow around the hayfield. Around and around over bumpy ground.

I had completed a little over half the hayfield when the harrow (actually several harrows joined together) began to come apart. Badly. I ended up taking everything totally apart and then reattached everything again. This took over an hour. But I did a better job with the chains this second time as everything stayed together for the rest of the day - and that includes dragging the harrow in two of the pastures which are very bumpy.

As the afternoon went on it got warmer, drier, and windier. Therefore I created more dust. And as I was going in circles I had to keep opening (for air on a warm day) and closing (to keep out the dust) the window.

I also didn't like the strong wind late afternoon blowing some of my dirt away.

While I would have liked to have done two passes over the field to make the ground even smoother, I didn't. Because,

• I had flattened the gopher mounds,
• I would have really torn up the grass and created more dirt to blow away, and
  
• It is over 35 miles to drive around the hayfield. (at 5 mph you do the math for the time)
  

So I decided to go over parts of the pastures. I had drug the harrow over the pastures once a number of years ago and it was time to smooth part of them again. The pocket gophers have started to move into the pastures creating dirt mounds, and I had dead weeds to knock over.

I did part of the south pasture and some of the middle pasture until dark. I went over half of the south pasture - which still took some hours. The priorities were:

1. gopher mounds
2. dead weeds
3. break up cow pies

Tomorrow I will finish part of the middle pasture and then do parts of the north and northeast pastures. The north and northeast pastures are relatively smooth like the hayfield so that won't be too bad. I just have to survive the middle pasture which is the roughest of them all.

At the end of the day both the pickup (inside and out) and I are covered in dust.

Photo 1: the start
Photo 2: starting to take it apart to fix

Photo 1: just the harrows
Photo 2: second time is the charm