First I spent two hours to finish cutting my field. I found that a thin strip of grass was being left by the haybine on the left side. Initially I thought I wasn't driving straight. When I looked I found that one tooth was missing (broken off). As it was a foot from the left side of the haybine I kept cutting and tried to make sure I kept the missing tooth out of the alfalfa to be cut.
Then my neighbor wanted me to cut the rest of his field. When I did my first cutting he had me cut the higher (and dry) part of his field. I got a half bale from that - a lot of which were weeds.
This time I cut the lower part of his field which was now dry. It was quack grass, not the best grass. The cattle will eat it. It was very tall. Better to cut it as if I let the cattle in to eat it half of of the grass would be lost due to the cattle walking and laying on it and flattening it.
To cut this grass I had to drive in my lowest gear. The first go around was difficult to cut as their kids had driven around the perimeter with their ATVs and mostly flattened the grass. That made cutting the grass harder as the haybine had to lift and cut rather than fold/wrap and cut.
As tall as the grass was the haybine did very well as long as I went slow.
I should get lots of bales from the grass; how enthusiastic the cattle are to eat it I'll find out this Winter.
Now to get this hay dried and baled. The weather forecast which was clear and sunny all week, yesterday added a chance of rain on Friday. Now tonight the forecast moved that chance of rain up to Thursday.
After cleaning the haybine I returned it to Wyatt's place. Since it was now evening, and therefore less traffic on the roads, I then went to the gas station and filled up the tractor with diesel so I will be ready to rake (at least in parts of my field as the windrows are not thick), then bale the hay.
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