Harrowing the pastures is done

Monday I finished my harrowing for the year.   Well, all but where the extended corral is located.  When that is taken down in June that spot will be harrowed then.

Harrowing took some time this year.   First it was slow to start because I decided to fix one of the damaged harrow sections.  On the section shown below, one of the side (up and down) pieces was broken off.   I have lots of broken harrow section pieces from years past.  I got one of those side pieces for this harrow.   To put this piece on I had to straighten the top side-to-side piece.  When doing so half of the piece broke off.  Argh!!  So I had to replace the entire piece.  Also, the middle side-to-side piece was half broken.  So I replaced that piece also.

Making this repair work slow going was that I had to remove the teeth of the pieces to remove or add the side-to-side pieces from the up-and-down pieces holding them in place.  These harrow sections are old and the bolts holding things together were stuck and hard to remove.  I still must have some strength as some of the bolts twisted into two pieces when I tried to unscrew the bolt's nuts.  So I had to find replacement bolts and nuts.

But as you can see the 'rebuilt' harrow section looks good.  Now that harrowing is pretty much done, this piece held together.   But as usual the tree roots that sometimes run along the top of the ground did a number on a different harrow section.  

The middle section on the right side got damaged / partially broken up from the harrowing this year.  The following photo is before I started to do the harrowing.

At one point I had to move the large metal hay feeder sitting in the middle pasture.  After I did so, I completed the harrowing of the middle pasture.  Then at the end of the day I saw that I was missing a piece from my tractor's 3-point hitch.   The next day I looked and looked where I harrowed the field after moving the metal feeder.  (Moving the metal feeder had nothing to do with the loss of the piece.)  After a few go-rounds I finally found the piece. Here is where I found it.  I screwed it back onto the 3-point hitch.

Also slowing things down is that before harrowing the middle and north pastures I hand raked the manure next to and under the trees in the pastures away from the trees and the roots at ground level.  Lots of trees.

The pastures all now look good and the manure is all broken up.

Now on to other projects.