Hayfield is cut

Late this afternoon I finished cutting my hayfield.

First I had to fix on of my sickle teeth.  Yesterday I hit a rock out on my hayfield.  There shouldn't be any rocks out there, but on occasion one will pop out of the ground during the year.  This time it was a big rock.  The haybine threw the rock up in the air and then out in front of the haybine.  I had to stop and remove the rock.  Near the end of the day after cleaning some hay from the haybine's bed I noticed the broken tooth.  It doesn't appear the broken tooth caused a line of uncut grass, which can happen.

The rock.

Broken tooth

Fixed tooth

The fixed and broken teeth.

I also noticed two of the rock guards were loose so I tightened their bolts.

Then I decided to go out and use a hand scythe cut the grass around the legs of one of the power line towers.  Yesterday I cut around one of the towers and it takes extra time to cut close but not hit the tower leg and damage my haybine. 

I thought it wouldn't take long or much effort to cut the grass away from the tower's legs.  Wrong.   The grass was very tall - up to the height of my neck in places for the standing grass.  Lots of other grass was too tall to stand and therefore laid down on one another, which made it harder to cut.  And the grass was thick.  So the cut grass didn't just fly from the scythe at the end of the swing as the tall grass at the end of my swing stopped the grass.  And the cut tall grass wanted to wrap around the scythe.  What I thought would take 20 minutes to do took 45 minutes to an hour to do.   In the end it made it easier and quicker to cut around the tower's legs.

Yesterday's tower.

Today's tower.

And I had to go twice to get diesel to fill my tractor.  Since the fuel gauge is not working I have no idea how much diesel is in the tank unless I fill it completely.  So I got a later start than yesterday.  But it only took me 3 and 1/2 hours to finish today.   This part of the field - other than around the towers - is not as tall or thick as other parts of the field.  There is less alfalfa in this area of the field.  Apparently as years go by grass takes over and the alfalfa doesn't grow as much.

Yesterday's cut is already drying fast.

Done.