I love my hay rake

I used my hay rake today.  It works great.  I love it.   The only negative is that it is difficult to back up.  I only had to back  up twice today due to the small size of one field.  Each time I ended up unhooking the rake from the tractor and pushing it back by hand.  The front wheel is too twitchy when driving the tractor backward.

17 second video of the rake in action: https://youtu.be/eBNp5gfoN3I


So I was almost done raking the hay when my joy turned to sorrow.  In one of the last windrows I had cut yesterday I found a dead cat.  A beautiful black and orange long haired cat.  Why it remained in the tall grass and did not run away as the loud tractor and haybine approached - especially as the house and buildings and tall grass near them were so close - is a mystery.   I don't know if the cat is the property owner's cat or a stray cat.  It doesn't matter.  I am upset the cat was killed by the haybine.

The raked field

I expected the grass to dry quickly.  But I thought: cut one day, rake the next, and bale the third day.  But the grass was already dry so I baled it all today.  The sooner the better as the weather is predicted to change on Friday.  Rain and cold.

I was probably thrown off by the dead cat as I had problems baling the hay.  One problem is that I made the "wrong lever" mistake.  Instead of pushing the 'twine wrap lever' I pushed the 'open the door' lever and the bale started to come out.  This time I didn't compound the mistake and let the bale go out instead of closing the cage to try to keep the bale inside.

So I had a bale with no twine around it to hold it together.   What I did is unroll the bale across the field.  Initially I used the tractor's arms to push and roll the bale.  Once the bale was smaller I got out and pushed on it to roll the bale and unroll the hay.

Messed up bale.  I unrolled it to this point using the tractor.  The rest I did by hand.

Once the bale was unrolled I used the baler to suck in the hay and create a new bale.

A bunch of wasted time due to a stupid mistake.

For the next bale the rope broke when I pulled on it to cut the twine.  The rope is old.  I tied the two pieces of rope together.  For the bale after that I forgot to secure the back tractor window and the rope slipped out.  Half the rope was sucked into a bale.  After that I had get out of the tractor each time to cut the twine using of the short bit of rope left.  And cutting the twine when the bale is not spinning had the effect of the twine for the next bale shrinking back inside the feeder tube which meant I had to take time to feed the twine back out.  *sigh*

A couple of times the bale's start was touchy.  I had read about problems starting bales.  Apparently if the hay is too wet or too dry, with this model baler the hay doesn't like to wrap solid and start a good core.  While the hay was dry I didn't think it was over dry.  I think my problem was a combination of the grass being dry and being all grass but not super tall grass.  My field is grass and alfalfa with the grass growing taller. This field had a different variety of grass than the smooth broom grass in my field.  I had no problems forming a core for the bale from hay in my field.

The two times the bale's core struggled in the beginning I ended up with extra loose hay left in the bale's cage after I wrapped and unloaded the bale.  It was difficult to clean as I was not going to go inside the baler cage and I didn't have a long handle broom to reach inside.  I had to work on removing the loose hay from various points outside the cage, which took time to do.

The day had started so well with my new hay rake.

I got six and a half bales.

Then in the evening when I went to get my first bale to bring home I drove to the furthest bale in the field.  Out beyond the bale I noticed something back and white.  Paper?  Garbage?  ....Daisy?

No... not Daisy.   Not way out here far, far from home.

I called out.  Yes it was Daisy!  She had laid flat to the ground as my tractor approached the hay bale.  When I stopped the tractor and called for her she got up and quickly slinked over to the nearby fence to the north.  Then she waked along the fence in the other field towards the buildings and tall grass.  All the while keeping an eye on the tractor.  She is a smart cat.  She knew to get on the other side of the fence for safety.

I was shocked to see her so far from home.  She was probably hunting.  In addition to the dead cat I found in the morning I also found a dead mouse in a windrow.  There are mice to be hunted.  And Daisy is quite the hunter.

After I moved all the hay bales to my NE pasture I parked the tractor in the pole shed.  After I turned off the tractor and got out it here I found Daisy sitting in the yard waiting for me.

She pretended she was here the whole time waiting for me.

"No... that wasn't me over at the neighbor's field.  I was here all the time waiting for you.  That must have been some other cat."

Oh, Daisy.  What am I going to do with you?!