Irrigation done

Wednesday night I shut off the irrigation.  I am done for the year.  Everything has been watered.  I am happy I don't have to move sprinkler line pipes twice a day and that I can sleep in later in the morning.  I have moved the three sprinkler line pipes back into the holding area.

Before and after.

Hay baling still not done, part 2

I am still not done baling my and Donna's hay.  After the bale fire on Saturday, on Sunday morning I talked with another neighbor, Larry, who knew something about baling hay, as to why the baler was having problems taking in hay.  He thought I was driving too slow.  I drove at around 16 rpm and Larry thought I should drive at 19 rpm.   He thought the baler should always take in hay.  I wasn't convinced going faster would solve the problem.  Larry also thought that perhaps the baler's clutch was slipping and that caused it to sometimes stop and to slow the hay intake.

Okay....

Sunday morning I cleaned the baler.   I removed all the hay residue from the baler.  Some residue was still wet from Saturday's soaking of the baler after the fire.  Then I began to bale hay.  I drove at 21 rpm, even faster than the minimum speed Larry recommended.  Several bales ago the baler began to slow at the upper 30s in bale size.  The last bale it began to slow by the mid 30s.  This morning it began to slow by 31 in bale size.  Going faster didn't make a difference.  I took a break so I wouldn't overheat the hay and cause another fire.  I tried baling another windrow.  Still slow going.  I took another break.  Tried again.  Still slow.  And later once again.  Still slow.  I had started with 9 1/2 windrows left to bale.  When I quit I had four windrows left to bale.

The baler was going slow even if it wasn't taking in hay.  I decided to wait for Larry to observe my baler trying to operate.  When I spoke with him in the morning he said later in the day, after his family get-together, he would stop by to observe the baler.  His get-together ended up lasting all day.

Observing the PTO as I had baled I was thinking the problem may be with my tractor's PTO clutch instead of the baler's clutch.  Monday morning I got Larry to observe the tractor and baler.   He agreed with me, it looked like it may be with my tractor's PTO clutch.

So a call to the John Deere dealership.  Their service department never called me back until Tuesday morning.  Bring the tractor and baler in and they will look at it.

First I wanted to take all the bales made so far off the field and stack them in the hayshed on wooden pallets.  If I left the bales on the ground too long moisture will be sucked up and into the bottom of the bales, and the bales have been on the ground for a number of days already.

Here you can see how after a number of days how the bale affected the grass.  And the bottom of that bale was slightly damp.

So I moved the bales and stacked them.  A few bales had partially torn net wrap when they unloaded from the baler.  So I tied a little twine around them to make sure the bale didn't start to come apart as I hauled it.

 Larry has stopped by to ask me if my PTO was a two-speed PTO.  No, I only have a 540 PTO.  The tractor doesn't have a 540 and 1000 PTO.

As I drove back to the hayshed I ran into another bale. Because the shape of some bales may not be straight all the way across, and some bales had torn net wrap, I planned to move the "perfect" bales last as I thought some bales would have to be stored outside the hayshed as the hayshed would be full.  So a few bales were here and there.  I would drive around them if they were in the way.  My mind was still on Larry's conversation and the John Deere's conversation so I forgot about extra bales until I drove into one.  The bale I was carried fell off the bale spear.  I didn't 'hurt' the bale I ran into, but the bale I was carrying fell.  That bale's net wrap came off and the extra twine I added.  The end result was that I ended up with only a half a bale I could move with the tractor.

The stacked bales.

At 3 pm I drove the tractor to the John Deere dealership.  The dealership is south of town and I live north of town.  Lots of traffic, some of who were not happy to follow a tractor and baler as I couldn't drive as fast as them.  But I made it to the dealership.  It was Tuesday afternoon.  They said they would get to working on my tractor or baler on Wednesday or Thursday.  As of today I haven't heard back from them.  The weather forecast has a big change.  A strong cold front will arrive last Saturday night and Sunday is suppose to be wet.  So hopefully the dealership get it all fixed by Friday as I still have four windrows, and then Donna's field, to bale.   What a disaster this hay baling has been.

Yesterday and today I spent time gathering up the loose hay that fell off some bales with bad net wrap, and the bale that has caught fire.  I ended up gathering three heaping pickup loads of loose hay.  I had a little area in the barn with no small hay bales.  As you can see, I filled it with loose hay.

Hay baling still not done

I still am not done baling my hay.  It has been six days now for a job that should take a little over a day.  This has been a disaster.

The last problem on Friday was the baler's actuator not working until I did a test and it started working.  Saturday was the real test.  Make a hay bale and see if the actuator works and net wraps the bale.  And it worked.  I continued on and made more bales.  Things were going fine and it appeared I may finish baling the hay before I had to move my irrigation pipes at 7:30 pm.  But no.  After 6 pm another problem occurred.   I appeared to have only a bale and a half to make.  But on the ninth bale for the day the baler was having trouble taking the hay once the size got to the late 30s.  It was like too much hay was being fed to the baler, and my windrow by then were not large.  So this slowed me down and I had to go from fourth gear to third.  Then down to second.   My bale size goes to 60.  At 44 it would go to 44.5 then back to 44.  Over and over.  The size should increase as I fed one windrow into the baler.  I decided to net wrap the bale and unload it even if it is smaller.  That way I can see inside the baler if there was a problem.  I unloaded a half sized bale.

Checking the baler I could see no problems.  So I started making another bale.  Things started off fine but then the feeding problem slowing me down started in the mid 30s.  I continued on, slowly.  At bale size 43 I was driving north gathering hay.  The south wind would blow hay dust my way so I had to close my tractor window.  With my skull fracture last Fall I lost my sense of smell.  Or so I thought.  Apparently I still have a very minor sense of smell.  I started to smell something different. I didn't know what it was.   For some reason I thought a neighbor upwind may be bar-b-queing. With the hay dust the baler was hard to see.  I decided to stop and get out and go check the baler.  Walking around the back of the baler I noticed smoke and then saw some red embers in some of the hay chaff coating the baler.

I quickly unloaded the bale from the baler and drove a short distance away.  The bale was covered in chaff and loose small hay.  The few spots I saw smoke I stomped it out.  There was still hay chaff and residue in the baler and smoke coming from some of the spots.  I removed what I could of the chaff and dust but couldn't get it all as some was crammed into spots.  So I drove home and got a garden hose and got everything wet.  Over and over.  Even if there was no smoke in that spot on the baler.

Just as I was finishing up a man who had driven by on the road stopped and came to tell me my hay bale was on fire in the field.  Sure enough lots of smoke was coming from that hay bale and chaff.  I went back out to that hay bale was a pail of water and a rake.  I got rid of the smoking areas.

By now it was almost 8 pm.  Past time to start moving irrigation pipes for the evening.  Tomorrow (Sunday) will be another day to finish baling the hay.  It's late now and I'm tired and falling asleep.  Tomorrow I will write about Sunday and Monday's "baling" activities.

More hay baling problems

The hay baling challenges do not stop.

This morning I checked the last bale I made the previous evening.  A typical bale is straight across.  Not this bale.

Let's look at the baler.   Hmmm...that's odd.

I checked the front rollers and again they were wrapped with hay when they shouldn't be.  I spent a long time cutting and removing this hay from the rollers.  In the following photos you should see the rollers and no hay.

Once the hay was removed from the baler rolls, I checked one of the side panels.  I found one hydraulic hose to the mechanism that opens and closes the back gate had a leak.  The hose has a slow drip from where the rubber goes into the metal end.  I forgot to take a larger photo of the area.  The hose is 8 feet long and is threaded here and there between two connections.  It took a long time to remove the hose.  I called the local John Deere dealership to see if they stocked this hose but got no call back.  It is Friday and I couldn't wait longer.  I went to a local machine shop that also deals with hydraulic hoses and they made me a new hose. It cost me $50.   When I went to reinstall the new hose I found the new hose was about 4 inches longer.  Usually that is not a problem but this area has lots of moving parts and chains and no real extra room.  I worked at it and an inch here and an inch there, etc. and I got the hose to finally fit.

So I didn't start baling hay until 3 pm.   The first bale got a tear in the middle of the net wrap when I unloaded the bale.  I'll have to add a little twine when I later move the bale.   But no hay on the rollers.

The second bale caught one end of the net wrap in the baler.  Not too bad.  Probably won't have to add twine to the bale when I move it.  Again, no hay on the rollers.  Lots of loose chaff from the hay. 

The third bale.  I can roughly tell how long it takes to net wrap a bale.  For this bale it was going on longer.  Once before this happened, and once I stopped the PTO, then restarted the PTO the monitor reset and stopped the wrapping.  Not this time.  Each time I restarted the PTO the wrapping continued.   So I unloaded the bale from the baler.  Lots of extra wrapping was around the bale.  The wrapping went from the hay bale back into the baler's belts.  I had to cut the wrapping between the bale and baler.  To remove the wrapping from the belts I had to cut the wrapping back at the net wrap roll and then pull out the wrapping from the belts.  Then I had to reset the wrapping to start back in the initial rollers.

Because things are acting wierd lately I decided to check engaging the PTO to run the belts without picking up any hay.  I found the belts were taking the net wrap from the roll of net wrap.  I had to cut and remove it again.  This time I tested the PTO and belts without any net wrap in the initial rollers.  Over and over again the initial rollers would rotate.  The monitor had said the net wrap was done, but the mechanism didn't know that.  It was after 5 pm on a Friday.  The John Deere dealership closed at 5:30 pm so I called them for advice.  He had me check a few things.  I learned about the net wrap actuator. It was still enabled.  His work around to reset the actuator did not work for me.  The only other suggestion was to check the voltage.   The connections seemed fine.  My neighbor Curtis wasn't around who could show me how to check the voltage.  So in the meantime I read the baler's manual for ideas.  There was a description on how to use the monitor to check the actuator's voltage.  That didn't seem to work the way the manual described in how I would get a reading.  But what happened was the actuator then began to work and it reset to normal.   I checked and the initial net wrap rollers no longer operated when I was just running the belts and not wrapping a bale.  Good.  I reset the net wrap in the initial rollers.  It was now time to move my irrigation pipes.  So tomorrow I'll see if things are back to working normally.  And if so, then what will be my new strange problem as I get a new problem every day.

I should have been done baling my field in less than 2 days, but after 3 days I only have half the field baled, and each day I make less hay bales.  When will this strangeness end?

More strange hay baling problems

Today, before starting to bale my hay, I let the cattle go from the NE pasture over to the north pasture.  They had eaten the NE pasture fairly well and preferred to go to a pasture with taller grass.

Once I straightened the hay baler's twisted belt I started to bale hay.  I got an earlier start than yesterday.   Little good that did me.  For the first hay bale part of the net wrap got caught in the baler.  So when I move the bale later I will have to tie some twine around it once I lift it off the ground.

The other problem was that hay had wrapped around several of the rollers.  That never happened before.  The middle of each roller was hay free.  The hay would be between the roller and the belts.  I was concerned this would continue to build larger with each bale made.  So I had to use a knife to cut through the tightly wound hay.  I still couldn't pull all the hay out from between the roller and belt so I had to run the baler briefly over and over and the belts would move and loosen some of the hay each time.  After 20 to 25 minutes I got rid of the round hay from the rollers.

Another thing is that I didn't have any loose chaff in the baler I had to clear out after unloading a bale.

Here is a photo of a lightly wound roller and one that I could get a good photo of.  Most of the hay wrappings were larger and thicker.

I made a second bale.   This time the bale was wrapped correctly when I unloaded it.  But again several of the rollers were tightly wound with hay.  I got some of the wrapped hay cut and then it began to rain.  Great.  Just great.  We got another .01 of an inch of rain.  I parked the baler and turned it off.

I checked the baler's manual to see why hay would wrap on a roller and nothing was mentioned.  I called the local John Deere dealership and talked to their service department to learn why this would happen.  They never heard this happening before.  They had no idea why.

Donna stopped by and agreed the hay was not wet but that it was sticking and wrapped tight around the rollers.

Since it had rained and was now damp I took a break and didn't make any more bales. The wooden salt feeder in the north pasture needed some repairs as the cattle abused it badly the last time they were in the north pasture.  I hadn't gotten around to fixing it until now.  I'll see how long it lasts before the cattle abuse it again.

I then had time to make one bale before I had to move irrigation pipes.  This time the bale wrapping wouldn't stop.  I had to stop the PTO and only then did the control wake up, stop wrapping and cut the wrap so the bale could be unloaded.  This bale was wrapped two to three times the normal wrap.  But the baler's rollers were not wound with hay.

After I moved the irrigation pipes I had time to make one more bale.  It was dark when I unloaded the bale.  It seemed to be wrapped okay.  I'll know more when I can see the bale in the sunlight tomorrow morning.

So, all in all, I only was able to make 4 bales today.  I have lots of windrows left to bale.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Another strange day

Today I saw the bull checking out my fence repair.  I think he was testing my fix.  I had to first put more water in he cattle's water trough.  Once that was done I seen the bull was no longer checking out the fence repair.  I still have the gate closed on the driveway entrance to be on the safe side.

Today I was to start baling my hay.  I first had to move the hay out from under the power line towers as I didn't want to drive under them.  So that slowed my start.  Then I noticed a geyser in one of my irrigation lines.  On a rare occasion in the past a riser would unscrew and a geyser would happen.  Not this time.  The sprinkler popped off the riser.  That has never happened to me before.  I am still not sure why this happened as it didn't make sense.   I didn't have time to figure out the failure so I put a replacement sprinkler on the riser.  This one works.

So I didn't get started baling until 2 pm.   Things were going fine though slower than I predicted.  The hay is dry and in making a bale I get a bit of chaff.  Previous times I baled I would clear the baler of the chaff after every fourth or fifth bale.  Today I had to clear the chaff from the baler after every bale was made.  I don't trust chaff in the baler as I am concerned it would affect net wrapping the bale.

After a number of hours we had a rain shower.  Not predicted.  No rain cloud.  Just a thin cloud passed overhead the field and it began raining. What in the world?!  Oh yeah, I am trying to bale hay.  At the time I was clearing chaff after unloading a bale and I ended up staying under the baler's back gate door to stay dry.  It didn't last long but things were damp.  I had to wait five to ten minutes for the windrows to dry.  This rain is odd.  When cutting my hay no rain is forecasted.  After the hay is cut and I wait for it to dry suddenly rain enters the forecast at the last minute.  Yesterday morning it rained.  This morning it rained.  When I was baling another rain.  Now tomorrow rain is in the forecast.  I think rain will be a last minute concern until I finish baling.

After the rain was over my baling started to have issues.  At times the baler would jam up in processing hay.  So I would have to drive slower and not take hay as fast as before.   Then shortly after starting a new bale the baler froze up.  I had to dump the small bale as I saw that one of the belts had twisted around.  How that happened, who knows.  I worked and worked on trying to twist the belt back but since the belt shouldn't have ever twisted between the rollers as there is no room to twist, there was no easy way to twist the belt back.

I had to get my neighbor Curtis to help me.  Both of us tried this and that and eventually got the belt twisted back into the correct shape.  I was able to make one more bale before I had to go and move irrigation pipes.  That went well and I had a little light afterwards so I went to make another bale before dark.  Wouldn't you know it, the belt twisted again.   What is going on?!!!   I had to dump the small bale.  It was getting dark so I gave up and will get the belt twisted back into correct shape tomorrow.   I never had a belt twist on this baler before and it makes no sense on how the belt could twist.

So I only got 10 bales made.  In my first cutting in July when I had all those problems I was able to make 10 bales the first day.   At least today all the bales wrapped correctly.

So baling my hay will take longer than expected.

But that is how life is in this world.   Strange.

Broken fence and cattle jailbreak

This morning around 6:30 am Daisy and I were woken up from our sleep by a large strange sound.  Once awake no more indications of the sound that woke us up.  Since Daisy was actively listening for more of the sound, I figured I didn't dream the sound.  So I got up to look outside.  I saw Toby had broken through the fence between the NE pasture and the yard.  He and Speckles were eating the lawn grass.  Most of the rest of the cattle were at the fence watching those two in the yard.  I went outside and was able to prop up the fence before the rest of the cattle could figure how to get through the broken fence. I closed the driveway gate by the road.   I then herded the herd into the corral.  That done, I was able to open the nearby gate to the NE pasture and herd Toby and Speckles back into the pasture.

I got an extra old gate and a corral panel and bungee cord attached them to the damaged fence.  Then I let the rest of the herd back into the NE pasture.

I went off to move irrigation pipes.  An hour and 45 minutes later when I returned back to the house I found all but one cow in the yard.  Fortunately I still had the driveway gate closed.  Toby re-broke the fence in the same spot.  The bungee cords were missing one of their hooks and the old gate was laying on the ground.  When I found the hooks in the grass one hook was bent to be straighter.

Most of the calves were in the corral.  I closed the gate between the corral and NE pasture, re-opened the yard / NE pasture gate and herded the cattle out of the front yard.  The trees and bushes hadn't been eaten yet though I did have one calf starting to eat the leaves of one of the bushes.  Instead of going through the NE pasture gate the cattle all went back to the backyard corral gate.  The initial cattle all went to my English walnut trees and started to eat their leaves.  Grass is not good enough for my cattle.

I quickly opened the corral gate and got the cattle herded into the corral.  I left them in the corral for a while.  I had to fix the fence.  This area of the fence was on my to-do list to someday fix/improve.   The boards were nailed on the yard side of the posts as that had a better look to "hide" the posts.  Not the best thing as cattle can push against the boards and pop them off the posts.  I put in a new fence post to replace the one Toby broke.  I then nailed the fence boards on the pasture side of the posts. To be on the safe side as Toby was focused on this section of the fence I re-bungee corded the old gate and corral panel back to the fence.  This time I put the gate and panel on the pasture side of the posts.  I let the cattle back into the NE pasture and so far no more fence breaks.  I still left the driveway gate closed.

Yesterday evening I had moved the cattle from the south pasture to the NE pasture.  Once I make my hay bales I doubt all will fit inside the hayshed.  The rest will have to be stored in the NE pasture.  So I want the NE pasture to be eaten down now, before I move the hay bales to the NE pasture. 

Since I wasn't going back to bed after moving my irrigation pipes, Daisy wanted to come outside and keep me company as I fixed the fence.

While this is August and usually little chance of rain, since I have my hay cut, rain came into the weather forecast at the last minute.  Of course when I moved irrigation pipes this morning it rained lightly.  .01 of an inch fell officially.  So, no hay baling today.  Time to go back to sleep.  Once the fence was fixed Daisy and I went back into the house and went back to sleep.

Second hay cutting done

Sunday I completed the second cutting of my hayfield.  Saturday was another full day of cutting like Friday.  I had a few hours left to finish the cut on Sunday.  On Sunday I then also cut Donna's oats.  She planted oats in the area where she used to pasture her horses.  The oats wasn't ready to cut when I cut Donna's pasture in July.  It was certainly ready to cut now as it was almost all dry.  When I first start cutting I go in a reverse direction as the haybine needs to cut along the fence.  So the tractor then drives in the stuff to be cut.  Since the oats were so dry, and so tall, the tractor was warm from my prior work, and the temperature was 94 degrees, I was a little leery about doing the cut.  I keep a fire extinguisher in the tractor's cab and I made sure I had it when cutting the oats.  I kept an eye out in case a fire broke out.  Fortunately none did.  Once the initial cut was done the tractor then travels over the cut windrows as the haybine cuts the crop.  Not as much danger as the tractor is not in the crop.

On Sunday I also "cut" the south pasture.  I went over the pasture with the haybine a half foot or so off the ground.  While the cattle are eating the grass there are still quite a number of tall grass they didn't eat, or clumps of tall grass around old cow pies.  The cattle also favor parts of the pasture over other parts.  The tall grass is either dry, or matured into stalks and not blades of grass.  In the past sometimes a stalk of grass leans into a sprinkler head and then prevents the sprinkler's clapper from striking and turning the sprinkler head.  So now I pull the tall grass near a sprinkler head.  And one time recently when I bent over the adjust the pipe's connecting hook a stalk of grass went up one nostril of my nose until it hit deep inside my nostril.  That hurt!   Even though I am irrigating the pastures that doesn't really help the old tall grass.   So I decided to lop off the top of the grasses.  I figured it would take me 30 to 45 minutes.  It took me over two hours.

Today I decided to "cut" the tall grass in the middle pasture.  That took over three hours.  In the north pasture I had a smaller area to "cut" and that only took an hour.

My irrigation line was at the west end in the south pasture so most of that pasture was "cut".  The irrigation line across the middle and north pasture still has a day to go to reach the west end.  So not all of the middle pasture was "cut".  It would have nice to "cut" more of the middle pasture as there are a few areas the cattle had let the grass grow tall.

Once I reach the west end of the pastures I will head back to the east end before quitting irrigating for the year.  So another eight days or so of moving irrigation lines twice a day.  I can't wait for that to be over.

Hear is a photo of my main irrigation line that I put in the hayfield.  The long lines are aluminum.  The short lines are steel.

Earlier I had mentioned how the cattle like to flip the salt feeders over.  Here is an example the morning I took the photo of the irrigation mainline pipes.

And you can see how the salt blocks get covered when the feeder is flipped over.

Starting second cutting of the hay

Today I started the second cutting of the hay.  Even though I just finished irrigating the hayfield a little over a day earlier, the alfalfa is blooming and I want to get the hay cutting done with.

The second cutting is not as tall as the first cutting.  I had thought it would only take me a little over a day to cut the hay.  Wrong.  The hay is thick and the plants are full of moisture inside them.  I drove in the slowest speed to cut the area I last irrigated as in some spots it was still a little moist.  Otherwise I could only really drive in the second slowest speed; not the third lowest as I had expected I could.

I think I had started around the same time of the day as I did when I made first cutting last month, but I have to move irrigation pipe in the evening, and it gets dark earlier now.  So I had to quit cutting at 7:30 pm instead of 10 pm.  Two and one half hours less of cutting.  Still, I think I was able to cut more hay this time.  I cut somewhere between a third to half of the field.  So I may not finish until Sunday.

The cattle were taking a siesta for a few hours as I cut.

The black cow and the red cow are both licking salt blocks.  The pipe is the third irrigation sprinkler line. In the evening when I went to move irrigation pipes I noticed the wooden salt feeder was flipped over and the salt blocks were under the feeder.  I don't know why the cows like to flip the feeder over.  They don't want to share the salt with the other cows?

Hayfield irrigation done

Today I moved the third irrigation sprinkler line from the hayfield to the south pasture now that the two sprinkler lines have moved far enough down the pastures.  So I am done irrigating the hayfield.  I did two out and back passes even though Donna thought I could get by with one out and back pass.  Extra water doesn't hurt, and I also do not want to place the mainline in the hayfield again after I cut the hay as moving the mainline is lots of hard work.

After moving the two sprinkler lines in the morning I waited until the grass would be drier before moving the third line.  The hayfield grass is tall and thick and walking in it when wet soaks my pants several inches above my knees.  I used the time to finish the fence repair along the south/middle pasture line.  Once I was done I moved the tools over to another section in the middle pasture along the river where I want to fix a few fence posts along the river that may act to discourage Toby and Maria from walking upriver.   And wouldn't you know.  Toby and Maria had just decided to walk upriver.  I was minutes late.  I thought maybe I could convince Maria to turn around.  The river is a little over knee deep, I was a touch ahead of Maria, so I jumped in.  But cattle can move faster than a person in water and Maria veered out and ran upstream before I could get her to turn around.  So I had to let them do a little exploring.

I moved the third sprinkler line, and after a late breakfast at 1 pm, I started to move the mainline from the hayfield.  At this time Maria and Toby came back to rejoin the herd who now were in the south pasture.

I had to turn off the irrigation pump while I disconnected all the mainline pipes in the hayfield and moved the end cap to the last pipe in the pastures.  Before starting up the irrigation pump I had to get in the river and clear the screened pipe intake and the area around the intake.  In certain parts of the river weeds grow up from the river bottom.  The screen had lots of weeds on the outside and the river bottom weeds were almost reaching the intake.  Once a year I have to remove the weeds.  Usually the water pressure is 50 to 60 pounds.  Before I turned off the pump the pressure was 30 pounds.  That would explain why the past number of days the distance the water was being thrown was less.  It wasn't because I added pipes after getting past the corral area.  I now have the good water pressure again and the distance the water is thrown is quite far.

I then had to gather the pipes from the hayfield and stack them.  So I am tired now.  Once it warms back up - I wore a flannel shirt over my shirt all day - as today's temperature barely reached 70 degrees when our normal high temperature should be in the low 80s, I will cut my hay.

Broken lopper and fence work

When checking for weeds on the island I noticed the fence on the west end has been going downhill.  The fence is a couple strands of barb wire on wooden posts.  While in poor condition it still will keep the cattle from getting the idea to cross the river channel over to the "thumb" piece of my property.  But one spot looked like there was a path where most likely deer had crossed and ruined the fence in that spot.  Today, before the cattle could get an idea, I put in a metal post there and pulled up a strand of barbed wire to the metal post.  That should do the trick until one day I spend time re-doing / fixing the fence.

While on the island, which is mostly trees, I brought a lopper along.  I am tired of having to bend down a bit in one spot on the path the cattle made.  Especially since the trees have nasty thorns on them.

Black Hawthorn.

Black hawthorn is usually a shrub but under favorable conditions it can become a small tree. It rarely gets more than 35 feet tall. It has a round topped crown with spreading branches that slant upward. Usually, it has thorns 1/3-1 inch long on the branchlets.

Although the wood is hard and strong, it has no commercial value except for tool handles and other small items.

I don't have any photos of the trees.  It is an ok looking tree.  But the problem is that it has numerous thorns everywhere on the tree.  And the thorns are sharp and hard.  And even if the branch dies, the wood and thorns stay hard.

So I brought one of my two loppers along to trim part of the tree on the path.   Well... the wood is hard.  I thought I was not as strong as I get older.  Maybe that's not the case.  I had a little larger branch so I squeezed harder on the lopper handles to get through the branch.  Snap!  Not the branch, but the metal broke on one of the lopper's handles.  Metal.  Strong metal.  I was very surprised that it broke.  Now I have a useless lopper.

Last year I re-built the fence along the river where the south and middle pasture meet.  No sense have the cattle go/fall into the river at that location.  To make the fence straighter I left small amounts of land on the other side of the fence.  While the grass is not the best at that location the cattle still wanted to eat it.  A number walked in the south pasture to the river then went here and there just to get over to the small area with grass.  *sigh*

Yesterday a few of the cows decided they wanted back into the middle pasture and walked the river.  Late afternoon when I went to fix the fence on the island I found additional calves with the cows in the middle pasture.  I discovered the calves went to the grassy area and then pushed on the simple fence and broke off a few metal fasteners.  Since the middle wires dropped loose the calves went through the fence.

*sigh*

I thought I had rebuilt that fence well last year.  I guess not.  After I fixed the island fence I worked on re-building a section of this fence.  I decided to move a half dozen posts out and add a few more posts to eliminate the grassy area on the other side of the fence.  Now maybe the cattle won't walk upstream at least to this area.  I have a little left to finish tomorrow and then I can get to the projects I've been trying to get back to doing.

Finished spraying weeds

Today I finally finished spraying the entire property to get rid of weeds.  50+ acres is a lot to spray, especially since I use a backpack sprayer as I have trees to avoid.

I don't have a current photo of the sprayer.  This photo is from over 10 years ago.  But you can see what my backpack sprayer looks like.

I started spraying back towards the end of June.  I didn't spray everyday, but I did spray lots of times.  In the end I kept thinking I was going to be done in a few days but then some areas turned out to have more weeds than I expected and those areas kept adding days.   The last area I sprayed was thick with trees.  I didn't think there would be many weeds there but I was surprised.  On the other hand, it has been a few years since I last sprayed 100% of the property in one year and weeds come back.

Anyway, finally done spraying for this year.  I'm so happy.  Now on to other projects full time.

Yellowjackets

Stings usually don't hurt much to me.  But a sting from a ground wasp/yellowjacket hurts like heck.

It’s important to distinguish between different species of ground wasps because while the cicada-killing wasps are harmless, yellowjackets are not. Yellowjackets become highly aggressive if threatened. They can also sting multiple times and attack in large groups.

A few years ago when working on a fence I was putting in a fence post near a yellowjacket's hole to their nest.  I got stung a few times and had to get poison to spray in their hole to get rid of them so I could dig and put in my new fence post.  Now a few days ago I was stung three times in my left hand.  I was going through/moving some railroad ties in my stack to find the right tie for my backyard fencing project.  Apparently the yellowjacket wasps created a nest somewhere in the stack of railroad ties.  Their stings ended my railroad tie search as I had to run away from the stack of railroad ties and the yellowjackets that were starting to swarm and come after me.   The stings happened around 9 am and my hand hurt like heck until around 9 pm.  The next morning most all of the sting had disappeared.

Donna had an extra can of wasp spray.  I planned to use it before I tried again to find the correct railroad tie.  However a few days ago our hot weather left.  Mornings are cool and the days high temperature is much lower.  Today we were 12 degrees colder than our normal high temperature.  Colder temperatures slow the yellowjackets down.  One morning a few days ago I took a chance and was able to take the correct railroad tie off the top of the stack and not get stung as the yellowjacket wasps were not flying.


Also a few days ago I noticed the typical wasps going into holes in the side of a metal box I have.  These wasps don't attack, or if they sting, don't really hurt.  I was able to open the box and after a day many of them were gone and I was able to remove their nests from inside the box.

Cattle and trees and gophers

A few days ago when I was spraying in the middle pasture I saw Toby scratching on a small evergreen tree.  I yelled over at him to stop doing that.  Not much else I could do.  Toby looked my way.  After a couple more scratches he quit and moved on.   You can see how the tree now leans.  If Toby keeps doing this, the tree may not survive.

In the south pasture I seen where the cattle (Toby?) had knocked over a rotting tree stump.

The past few days I have been on a tear trapping pocket gophers in the south pasture.  Seven yesterday.  Four today.  It appears I got all the pocket gophers out of the pastures.  For now.   I had trapped all of the pocket gophers from the hayfield earlier.  But yesterday I moved the south irrigation line towards the road.  Guess what?  I've now found dirt mounds in three separate areas where I placed the line.  Some gophers apparently decided to come across the road from the neighbor's pasture after I had gotten rid of the previous pocket gophers.  So I imagine I'll get a few more pocket gophers in the south pasture before it gets to Fall and they mostly stop migrating from the neighbor's fields to mine for a better place to live.   43 pocket gophers trapped so far this year.

Found tree stump

This past Spring when preparing for my last bonfire in the middle pasture, walking though another section of the middle pasture I came across signs a tree stump was in the ground.  This was in an area where I had removed all the tree stumps around ten years ago.   I got a shovel and dug a little bit to see if it really was a tree stump.  Yup.  There is a tree stump that the ground is causing to rise slowly.

The stump appears to be large.  I didn't dig deep but I was able to also see signs of the stump coming up a foot or two to the right of where I had dug.

I have a few tree stumps I planned to dig and burn next Spring.  I now have an additional stump to dig and burn.

Last bonfire this past Spring

Some old photos I hadn't gotten around to posting earlier.

I'm done removing or burning stumps for the year.   Burning stumps this past Spring got rid of two small piles of branches laying next to trees.  I also got rid of a branch and wood pile covering a tree stump.  Lastly, I had used most of the branches laying in a pile by themselves.  To get rid of the rest of those branches I had one last bonfire this Spring.

I also burned in the bonfire some smaller soft wood from a nearby partially rotting tree stump.

Last bonfire of the Spring.

What was left a few days later, and after the cattle rubbed in the ashes.