Baling my hay

Let me try this again.   I was so tired from baling my hay I didn't get to writing this post until finally last night.  Just before I finished writing this post my internet failed.  So I went to bed.  Here it is another night.


After 3 1/2 days of work I finally finished baling my hay.   The task should take a day, or a little above a day, but this year has been a challenge.

The first day of baling didn't get a start until about 2 pm.  First I had to move the cow and calf away that were laying next to the baler.

Then I had to grease the hay baler's zircs.   Then I wasn't sure if my netwrap was enough.  I had bought another roll recently and now I placed the new roll in the baler's extra roll location.

The baler has four hydraulic hoses.  A pair for the hay pickup feeder, and another pair to open and close the back (gate) to unload the bale of hay.  Last year I forgot to mark the hoses with paint so in the future I would immediately know which of the tractor's hydraulic fittings to attach the hoses.   My first guess was correct as to where to attach the hoses.  So I painted the hose fittings to match the tractor's colors.  I used small model paint jars. For the first paint jar I used I dropped the jar's white lid on the ground.  As usual since my accident, if I drop something to the ground I can't find it.  I looked and looked.  Eventually I gave up and marked the spot.  The next morning when I was waiting for my uncle to wake up I looked again.  Again I could not find it.  Once again the fallen object disappears for good.  A strange world I live in these days.

Then it was off to bale my hay.   Last year when I first used the baler the net wrap somehow got sucked into the first roll of hay as the bale was being made and it used up all of the roll of net wrap.  This time I stopped and checked a number of times and it was not happening this year.   Once the bale was at the finished size the baler wrapped the bale.  Before unloading the bale I checked between the rubber rollers at the bale.  The bale did not appear to be net wrapped.  I opened the back of the baler and found that the rubber round roller was wrapped in net wrap. How the net wrapping works is the baler has two "small" rollers (one roller is metal and the other is rubber) the length of the net wrap.  The net wrap is fed through the two rollers into the baler and around the hay bale.  This time the net wrap stuck to the rubber roller and did not go around the hay bale.  Later I read the trouble shooting section of the baler's manual and it indicated that when the baler sits for a long period of time the net wrap can get stuck to the rubber roller.  Yup.  That happened to me this time.

Because the roller is rubber one must be very careful to remove the net wrap from the roller as cutting the roller can be damaging if the rubber gets cut.  So I had to go get a knife and a scissors to carefully remove the net wrap from the roll.  I did.  Then I had some net wrap that went between the two rollers.  The roller are right against each other and only the top rubber roller can be rotated by hand.  And it is not easy to do.  It requires both hands to turn the roller.  But I needed one hand to pull on the net wrap as I turned the roller.  Again, hard to do.  I eventually got most of the net wrap out.  But some net wrap was still between the rollers and bunched behind them.  Again a difficult task as the opening beyond the rollers is very small.  I kind of could barely get the end of the knife through the opening to try to carefully cut the bunched net wrap.

After over an hour I finally got over 99% of the net wrapped removed.  The rest disappeared once I rewrapped the bale.

To re-wrap the bale I had to setup the net wrap to feed it through the roller again.

Here are the instructions from the manual: http://manuals.deere.com/omview/OME126850_19/OUO6039_0000008_19_17OCT00_1.htm

The hard part is step 5 and "F" in the illustration where you get a little of the net wrap through the two rollers.  I hadn't seen the YouTube video on how to do it by using the lever. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO6o73SsVZA) So I was trying to turn the roll by hand.  Two hands on the roller to turn it.  But I needed one hand to push the net wrap between the rollers.  I couldn't do it.  I went to get Curtis for help.  He was not home as he was out on his motorcycle.  I tried Tye.  He wasn't home. Rusty wasn't home.  I called Donna.  She was on her riding lawnmower and didn't answer her phone.  So I went and tried and tried and tried over and over again.  Finally I got the net wrap started in the rollers.  Then I was able to correctly net wrap and unload the hay bale.  It took me over two hours to cut the net wrap, restart the roll of net wrap, then net wrap and unload the hay bale.  This was all frustrating.

On to the second hay bale.  This time the bale was net wrapped correctly.  But when I went to open the baler to unload the bale the controller claimed the bale was too big.  The back end (gate) of the baler wouldn't completely open.  Again and again I tried.  Finally I drove back home to where I had unloaded the first hay bale.  I went and got a pry bar to maybe push the back gate open.  Nope.  I couldn't do it.

I tried to open the gate.  I tried to close the gate.  I tried to open the gate.  Each time very slowly the gate would open a bit more.  After a while I mostly had the gate open.  I drove and stopped the tractor to try to get the bale to roll out.  Over and over.  Finally the bale came out.   The net wrap was partially torn off the bale.

On the left is bale number 2.  On the right is bale number 1.  Bale number 1 is how the bale should look and be wrapped.  I figure that maybe if I am careful when transporting the bale later that I could get it (mostly) into the hayshed.

Then on to bale number 3.  Again when I went to unload the bale the gate wouldn't open completely and the baler controller said the bale was too large.  After a number of retries the bale finally came out.  Again the net wrap was partially torn off.  Again, I decided to leave the bale and later see if I could transport it to the hayshed.

On to bale number 4.  Again the gate didn't want to open.  This time I completely tore the net wrap off the bale once the bale came out of the baler.  I had to physically unroll the hay bale so I could re-pickup the hay into the baler.

On the controller one can set the maximum bale size.  I have it set at 60 (inches) the maximum amount.  It worked fine last year.  I wanted to change the maximum bale size but I couldn't find how to do so in the manual.   Donna showed up when I was looking and looking in the manual.  I'll tell you...by now I was in a mood.   Finally I found how to change the maximum size.  Most controller setting use options 1 through 26 (or greater) to change them.  Not the baler size.  It is changed using a different button.  Go figure.  I changed the max size down one level to 59.5.

I then re-picked up the hay from bale 4 back into the baler.  I was able to unload the bale without tearing the net wrap.

Bale number 5.  Same thing.  No net wrap tear.  I changed the max setting down one more level to 59.  Same thing.  I was getting the bale out without a net wrap tear, but it was a struggle as the gate didn't want to completely open.

My uncle earlier thought he would arrive at my hours in a few hours from now.  So I continued my struggle until he would arrive.

I had another problem.  The baler's hay pickup mechanism is controlled by a hydraulic lever.  But the pickup didn't want to go all the way to the ground that I wanted.  Most of the hay from the windrow was getting picked up so I didn't do anything else as the manual seemed to indicate I had to re-bolt the pickup's small wheels to change the height.  When I re-picked up bale 4 I left a good amount on the ground.  Well, after a few more bales I decided I had to change the height even if it meant re-bolting stuff.  I looked at the manual on how to do this.  Then I looked some more in the manual about the pickup.  In another chapter (Chapter 45) I found a section that described a manual crank that also adjusted the pickup's height. 

Then my memory came back to me.  Last year I had used that manual crank to completely adjust the pickup's height.  So now I used the manual crank and got the pickup's height to the level I wanted.  I had picked up four windrows of hay so far, so I went back and went over all four rows again.  I also went over where I had picked up bale 4.  By the time I finished I had picked up 3/4's of a bale of hay.

I was able to make a few more bales of hay by the time my uncle Rick arrived.  For the day I made 10 bales of hay in almost 7 hours of work.

A poor amount of work.  It was a miserable day of baling hay.  The only thing good about the day was chatting with my uncle as I hadn't seen or talked with him for a couple of years since he last visited me.

Uncle Rick

Out of the blue my Uncle Rick from Washington state came by and visited me Saturday evening.    We were born on the same day and the same year.   We had a great visit till late Saturday night and then on Sunday morning until he had to return home.  So I didn't bale my hay late on Saturday evening, which was fine as I was having a nightmare of a day trying to bale my hay.  It was much better to visit with Rick.

Here we are checking out my cattle in the south pasture Sunday morning.   I noticed that Toby the bull was hanging out with Mama cow.  She must be coming into heat now.  The "big" animal in the center of the photo is one of my calves born this Spring.  My calves are doing fine.

Finally raking my hay

It rained again last night.   .07 of an inch of moisture.    I had an idea it was going to rain.  Several weather forecasts had a chance of rain.  Some a minor chance.  Some a small chance.  Some forecasts has rain missing us and staying in SW Montana.  Donna thought there was little to no chance of rain. Instead of raking my hay on Thursday, Donna thought I could start baling it late afternoon.  No....  I thought it was going to rain.  And sure enough it did overnight.  Not only overnight, but clouds built up in the morning and we had another rain shower around noon.  Yet another cold front too.

So I had held off from raking my hay.  I didn't want to rake and then re-rake my hay.  At 3 pm the clouds looked like they would no longer form rain clouds so I started to rake my hay.  I figured it would take me 4 hours or so to rake the hayfield.  A little over 6 hours before I finished.  I also planned on hooking up my baler and get it all ready to go tomorrow.  Since raking took so long I only had time before dark to hook up the baler to the tractor.  I then discovered that last year I forgot to mark the baler's four hydraulic hoses with different paint colors so I would know which hose went to which hydraulic connection on the tractor.  So tomorrow morning I need to figure it out, and then mark them with paint this time.  And I need to also grease the baler.   Then I can get to baling my hay.

Our next cold front is suppose to arrive on Sunday.  The weather forecast had now moved it to arrive Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Not Sunday night like they predicted before.  So I will be busy tomorrow and hopefully get everything baled.  If not, and it rains again....  *sigh*    "Mother Nature.  Can't you give me two days at least?!"

In the photos you can see the grass is already growing.

Initially I used a pitchfork to get the hay out of the tower's footprints.  I don't know what it is about the towers, but the hay under the towers was still wet.

To rake the hay, as I had no place to initially rake a windrow without it combining with another windrow, I started raking the hay in the middle of the field where I had last cut the hay.  That windrow was the shortest windrow.

Raking from the inside to the outside meant some windrows were partially crossed to make a new windrow.  Sometimes crossing windrows meant the new windrow had piles of hay.  Hopefully this won't make it hard for the baler to handle.

You can see how the hay laying there for almost a week was affecting the grass underneath the windrow.

Rain on my hay

At 3:30 am this morning I was woken up from a deep sleep to the sound of thunder.  And some lightning was happening.  I went outside and called for Daisy to come in the house, and he did.  Around 5:30 am I was woken up again.  This time it was raining.

Other than a stop of a few hours late morning, it rained until mid-afternoon.  .30 of an inch of rain.

Not good.  Everything is wet.  I checked the underside of one windrow.  It was wet.  I didn't want to rake the windrows this year but now I have too.  I am going to try to rake the hay tomorrow afternoon.  It is suppose to be dry Wednesday and Thursday.  Then Friday has another chance of rain.  One weather forecast has it dry after that.  Another weather forecast has a slight chance of rain next Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  I hope by raking the hay tomorrow it will be dry enough to bale some of it on Thursday.

I'm not the only one affected.  I seen that other fields cut when I did are also down and wet.

Hayfield

Here is my hand scythe.  I used it late afternoon to cut some of the grass growing in the hayfield along the yard fence.

My neck is almost back to normal.  When driving the tractor I have to mostly look back at the haybine to make sure everything is going right and I am positioning the haybine to correctly cut the row of grass in a straight line.  Hours of doing this gives my neck a pain when twisting to look backwards.

Finished hay cutting

I finished cutting my hay around 6 pm.  I finished a few hours earlier than I expected.  Things went well.  For about half of what I had to cut today I was able to drive my tractor in the second lowest gear.  I felt like I was then cruising.

The hay cut from the previous days are already starting to dry.  You can tell what I already cut today versus what I cut yesterday.

I have a hand scythe and I used it to cut the grass under the power line towers.  The grass was tall and thick.   The tall grass couldn't stand up and laid on other grass.  The grass was several levels deep.  In some spots the lowest level grass was turning brown and very wet.  The wetness wasn't due to lower ground but due to the thickness of all the grass.  It was very hard to cut the grass by hand.  I am somewhat amazed my haybine could cut the rest of the grass so well in all spots.

The weather forecast definitely has rain for tomorrow.  Not what I want since I just cut my hay.  I hope the rain doesn't come or it misses me.

I must be getting old.  This evening after I finished cutting the hay and then cleaning the haybine, I fell asleep for several hours.

Cutting hay

Yesterday afternoon I started cutting my hayfield.  I would have cut weeks ago but our rainy June stopped that.  I had planned on starting to cut on Friday, but after I did some yard mowing around noon I noticed the thick grass was still kind of wet near the ground and it was causing problems for my lawn mower.  I figured my tall and thick hayfield was also wet down low so I waited one day for a little extra drying time.

I usually can cut the field a day and one third.  I figured this year it could maybe take up to two days.  Wrong.  The hay is so tall and thick my haybine can barely cut it.  I have to drive my tractor in the slowest speed, and even then I had to sometimes stop moving and just let the haybine get the hay through.

I have spent two full days cutting my hay, and it looks like I have one more day left before I am done.  I am going to have lots of hay this year.  I guess I shouldn't complain at how hard and long it is to cut the hay this year.

The grass is so tall that along some of the barb wire fences I had trouble seeing the fence and had to be extra careful I didn't get the haybine to close too the fence and ruin one or both of the the things.

Of course after I started cutting the hay the weather forecast changed.  Now there is a good chance of rain on Tuesday, just after I cut my hay.  Then maybe on Friday.  It seems as if it is hard right now to get more than a three day period of no rain.  I hope it doesn't rain Tuesday.  My windrows are so tall and wide that if the hay needs to raked and turned over I'm not sure how or where I can do that.

A 29 second video of my haybine cutting hay: https://youtu.be/D-PCEOgnM8w

Calf 17 - Maria's

This afternoon I discovered that Maria finally had her baby calf.  If she was on schedule she would have had her calf back in March or April.  A few times this past week I saw Maria laying a certain way and it looked like she was getting closer and might have her calf in the next week or two.  It was faster than I expected.  I didn't notice the calf until mid-afternoon.  I think the calf was born in the morning or even a bit earlier. The grass in the pasture is still tall and sometimes it partially hides a cow, much less a small calf.

The calf is a female.  Darn.  This calf, and Diamond's upcoming calf, most likely will be held until next year as they will be a bit small to sell this October.  Having a female calf means I need to keep her separate from the bull next year in case she comes into heat earlier than expected.

Maria, the new mother.

The calf pretty much look like her mother.

Stump 10 removal

My final tree stump removal for the year.

To fill in the holes for the stumps I had already burned I used the tractor to push the dirt back in the holes.  Then I got the idea to use the tractor on a tree stump in the north pasture.  Initially I thought of just using the tractor's bucket to pry/dig the stumps roots that extended at ground level all around the stump.

As you can see the stump was near other trees and a fence.  I could barely get the harrow around the stump.  Once I got the roots out I pushed the stump itself using the tractor's bucket.  The stump was more rotten than I thought it would be as I think the tree fell over five or six years ago.  I was able to get all the stump down and out.  And low enough to be underground so it shouldn't affect the harrow.

I can't find a photo of the tree stump before I pushed it over.  It was around four feet tall.

After I removed the tree stump.

Tree work. Corral work.

I looked for the second nut from the chainsaw today.  Several times.  But could not find it.  In my supplies I found a nut that would work on the chainsaw.

For several days I had left the apple tree laying on the ground so the cattle could eat the leaves as they seem to like eating tree leaves.  Most of the leaves were now gone so I trimmed all the branches off the fallen trunk.

In the following photo, the tree trunks left to cut once I get my chainsaw working again.  The apple tree is in the middle.  At least all the tree trunks are lying on the ground so I don't have to worry about a trunk falling on a cow or calf, especially as some calves liked to stand underneath the tree trunks when they were higher up.

I used a shovel to dig around the bottom and an axe to chop the remaining roots to take down the apple tree trunk leaning against the fence.

I somewhat straightened the fence posts. Another day I will use a sledgehammer to firm the ground up against the posts.  And I will tighten the wires back up.

I forgot to mention. The second day of trapping to catch the pocket gopher in the middle pasture, I had got him.

Rain is definitely in the forecast.  In the evening I pulled the harrow and smoothed out the extended corral and also was able to go around the main corral to smooth it out as they were still a mess from driving on them when we last had lots of rain.  In front of the loafing shed the ground is still very soft and wet and I had to use four-wheel drive on the tractor to drive there.

I was going to snag the wooden hay feeder so I removed the floor boards and tipped the feeder out of the way.

After the harrowing was done I used the tractor to straighten a railroad tie in the loading corral fence.  I had a block of wood on the tie to hold the gate when the gate is open.  The cattle this Spring rubbed on the railroad tie and the block of wood and made the railroad tie lean.  So the gate would no longer stay on the block of wood.  That's fixed now.

When everything was done I let the cattle into the north pasture from the middle pasture.  It was time to rotate the cattle between pastures.  They were all happy to be in the north pasture as it was something new to do.   Maria and Diamond are still in the NE pasture and they came running to the corral gate.  So everyone was on each side of the corral gate trying to socialize.  Especially the bull who wanted to check Maria and Diamond out.  It has been almost a month since the bull has been with the other cows and all have now gone through their 21 day heat cycle and all should be bred, except Mama who was late in having her calf and probably has not come into heat yet.

Fence work and tree work

This morning I was to put my chain on my chainsaw and have it operate correctly.  No problem.  The problem yesterday - no idea.

First, I decided to spend the afternoon working on the fence by the river in the north pasture and get it fixed before I let the cattle into the north pasture again.  This Spring the cattle pushed sideways the end fence metal fence post where they go to drink from the river.  I replaced the metal fence post with another larger metal fence post.  Maybe this post will stay upright.

South I moved a fence post over and away a bit from a willow tree growing on the river bank.  The beaver try to eat the trunk and lower branches.  The branches above the fence the cattle try to eat.  Maybe this fence movement will protect the tree more from the cattle.

North to the northern fence boundary I redid this fence.  Over the years the cattle pushed the fence to try to get to the willow trees growing on the river bank, and this Spring the cattle really did a number on this fence.  The fence is now leaning too much.

The fence originally was strands of barb wire to keep the cattle from accidently falling down the river bank and into the river.  Then the cattle reached through the fence after I put in the ground willow branches from my previous willow tree that blew over and died years ago.  Some the willow branches had grown into new trees.  So I put field fence on my barb wire fence to stop the cattle from reaching through the fence.

So I had to take the field fence off, and also the barb wires.  Then pull out the metal fence posts and then pound them back into the ground to be upright.  The wooden posts were broken so I replaced them with more metal posts.  Where the willow trees are growing I moved the posts a little more away from the willow trees to keep the cattle from trying to eat the branches that grow above the fence.

So, once again more unplanned work completed.

Then it was back to cutting more of the fallen tree.  I was able to cut enough of the trunk that was resting on the fence to get the trunk off the fence.  I continued to cut the trunk and got several pieces cut before my chainsaw's chain came off.   The two nuts holding the cover over the chain had come off.  What?!!!  Seriously!

I went and got a magnet and then found one of the nuts.  I couldn't find the other nut and the mosquitoes started to eat me alive so I quit for the evening.  I hope to find the other nut tomorrow and then figure out why they came off the chainsaw.   If it is not one thing, it's another.

Trouble cutting another tree trunk

Today I finished spraying herbicide on the weeds growing in the north pasture.  I used a backpack sprayer.  As I hadn't sprayed weeds in this pasture last year, and I'm in a multi-year effort to finally get rid of the weeds, there were more weeds than normal in half of the north pasture.  The yarrow was trying to make a run for it.

After I finished the spraying I decided to cut down the tree that had fallen weeks ago in the strong wind storm.  The tree had fallen against another spruce tree and was held up of the ground.

However, over time the tree started to slip down closer to the ground.  Earlier I had used a step  ladder and handsaw to trim off the fallen trees branches that I could reach.  The top end of the fallen tree hung down and reached my fence.  That had all been trimmed before I took this photo.

By slipping down a bit, the fallen tree now had reached and bent down half of the apple tree.  The apple tree was pushing against my fence.  A few years ago I had rebuilt this fence.  I guess I did a good job as none of the barb wire broke.  The nearby metal post was starting to lean.

And you can see some of the apple tree roots were starting to come up out of the ground.

Now that my chainsaw was fixed I could reach a bit higher and most all of the fallen trees branches.  I left the fallen tree branches that were against the other evergreen tree branches.  I also was able to trim some of top end the fallen tree's trunk.  I was mostly able to make the fallen tree shorter so that when it came down it would miss my fence.

The following photo shows how the fallen tree was on half of the apple tree, and how the apple tree was bending my fence wires.

The fallen tree was lighter now.  But it still needed to come down.  I decided to cut the fallen tree near the apple tree.  The fallen tree would be held up from the ground level to the apple tree.  The end of the fallen tree would drop down to the ground.  Maybe even the top end would still would be held up by the branches of the evergreen tree, and only the cut end would drop to the ground.

As I expected the top part of the cut trunk would come together, after only starting the cut at the top for a little bit, I moved the chainsaw blade to the bottom of the trunk.  But, instead of going down the trunk went up and trapped my chainsaw blade and chain in the bottom of the cut.   What?!!!!  What happened to gravity?

It took some effort of pulling and pushing and eventually I was able to finally get the blade out of the cut.

I tried cutting more from the top.  Because I was standing on the step ladder to reach the trunk I couldn't cut a lot from the top.  I then would cut the trunk from the side.   The next I knew the trunk was starting to split and move.  But instead of moving down the trunk moved sideways and towards me on the ladder.

Holding onto the chainsaw I had to jump off the ladder.  I was able to land on the ground with no injuries.  In the following photo you can see how the trunk moved to the other side of the ladder and somehow did not knock the step ladder over.  So there was no way I could have stayed on the ladder.  Again, gravity was not working well.

The odd movement of the tree trunk also took half of the apple tree down.  So all my efforts to save that apple tree half failed.   The fence was pushed over more but the wires still did not break.  I was able to cut that half of the apple tree above the fence.   Then when I tried to cut the apple tree down by the roots the chainsaw's chain came off.  After I put the chainsaw chain back on, the chain didn't want to turn.  I don't know what happened but all my efforts couldn't fix the problem.  And to make things worse the mosquitoes were out and starting to eat me alive.  I may have to take the chainsaw back to the repair shop.  I'm starting to get convinced that after my head injury and coming back from death's door I am now in a parallel universe.  Strange and odd things happen much more now.

Of course because the tree trunk went sideways instead down, the top part of the tree trunk fell on my fence.  Again the fence wires somehow didn't break. I was able to cut many of the remaining side branches using a handsaw.  But I have more work to do to cut the remaining trunk once the chainsaw is fixed.  Nothing is simple or easy.

Once the chainsaw was shut off the calves and Speckles had to come and check out the tree trunk.