Second hayfield cut - off to a rough start

This afternoon I finally started cutting my hayfield.  

Usually by now I am done and have the hay put away.  Because the John Deere dealership can't seem to know how to fix my tractor, or order the correct parts, my first cutting was not until July.  That pushed me back for irrigating the field and then making the second cut.

Last year the second cutting was slower as I didn't wait long after I finished irrigating. That grass and alfalfa was moist inside the plants.  This year I planned to wait longer after I finished irrigating so the grass and alfalfa would be drier when cut.  This year the National Weather Service Climate prediction center predicted a dry July, August, September and October.  July was our fourth driest July as we only got .2 inch of rain.  Because I didn't want to re-lay the mainline irrigation pipes after the second cutting, I decided to irrigate the hayfield twice.  That took an extra 12 days.  I still have time for the second cutting.  Oh wait.  August turned out not to be dry.  We had 1.76 inches of rain so far, twice as much as normal.  And most of it was in the second half of August.  So the hayfield didn't need two irrigation runs, and the rain delayed me more.

No rain is in the forecast for this week so I decided to start cutting my field.  I waited till today to give Friday's rain a chance to somewhat dry a bit.  I would like to wait longer, but our temperatures are and will be below normal so the cooler temperatures make it longer for the cut hay to dry.  And the shorter days and less sunlight slows the drying down too.  Therefore I don't want to wait any more.

At 10 am the dew was still extremely wet and heavy.  So I went for a bicycle ride.  At 12:30 pm the grass that was in the shade was still wet.  So I decided to have a full breakfast.  Rascal slowed me down.  At 1:30 pm I went out to start work.  Oh wait.  Let me check if the haybine needs grease.  Yup.  I hadn't greased it after using it during the first cutting.  After a couple zercs I ran out of grease. Really? Now?  So I had to go buy grease.  I also decided to buy a new grease gun as the handle on the one I was using wouldn't stay in position when I loaded a new grease tube.

I didn't remember if I had filled the tractor with diesel after last using it.  I had a gallon so I poured that into the tractor.  Fuel tank didn't look completely full, and of course the John Deere dealership still hasn't fixed my fuel gauge.  I think there should be enough diesel as I wanted to get going on cutting the field.

At 3 pm I was ready to start.  It was very slow going to cut the field.  The field is not quite as tall as the first cutting, but due to the irrigation the field was dense and the grass and alfalfa were very green and moist.  And there are pocket gopher dirt mounds as some pocket gophers came back to the field. The dense hayfield made it hard earlier to see the dirt mounds for me to trap the pocket gophers.  The dirt mounds were wet so the dirt would cause the cut hay to clump and I would have to stop and remove it from the haybine.

I had to go slower than my first hay cutting in July.  There I was in the lowest gear and occasionally would have to stop the tractor from moving to process the cut hay through the haybine and its rollers.  This time I was in the lowest gear and would have to stop for processing almost every minute or two.  Even so, on a handful of occasions, I had to stop, raise the haybine, and pull out a large clump of cut grass and alfalfa that was stopping the cut in that part of the haybine.

Here is a later view of a clump of cut grass.  Earlier, usually the clump was much bigger.

When I would pick up cut hay it was heavy from all the moisture inside the grass and alfalfa.

The first cutting is of the opposite way so the haybine is closer to the fence.  The second go-around is in the right direction.  And I also pick up and cut where I had driven in the grass during the first go-around.

As you can see in the following photos the grass and alfalfa is not as tall as the first cutting in July as earlier the field was almost as tall as the haybine.  (And you can see the fence I plan to replace with my new fence rails.)

So the going was slow.  At this rate I won't be done cutting until Tuesday if things go well.

Things start to go downhill after a couple of hours.  The tractor started to occasionally speed up and slow down.  My memory is going.  I remembered this happened before but I didn't remember what I thought may be the reason for this to happen.  Then the tractor began to slow down more.  Am I running out of diesel?  I shouldn't be.  But as the fuel gauge doesn't work, I wasn't sure.  So I went and bought more diesel.  I put in about 5 gallons.  So, no, I wasn't close to running out of diesel.  I went back to cutting.  After a bit again up and down went the tractor speed.  Then I remembered.  The suspicion earlier - in July -  was that something may be in fuel tank and that object occasionally would slow the fuel down.  I suspect the John Deere dealership may have accidently dropped something in the fuel tank the last time they worked on the tractor and fuel gauge problem as this started to happen after they had worked on the tractor.  I was going to have them check this out when I took the tractor back to have the new tractor console repaired.  As the John Deere dealership had earlier ordered the wrong console back in June, I was still waiting - two months later - for the right console to arrive.  So, no, the fuel tank speed up/slow down problem wasn't fixed.  And I had forgotten about it until now.

I wanted to finish cutting a row.  But the speed up/slow down was happening frequently.  So I quit for the night.  I only got 5 and 1/2 rows cut today.  I have a lot more of the field to cut.  But tomorrow I will have to find someone who hopefully can fix the tractor problem.

Seriously, can I ever just cut the hayfield without a problem?