Baler blues

My bad luck continues.  If I didn't have bad luck, I would have no luck at all.

My goals for today:

1. Bale John's field
2. Get my universal joint parts
3. Bale a good portion of my field
4. Move my irrigation pipes
5. Ride a few miles on my bicycle

What I got done:

1. Baled John's field
2. Moved my irrigation pipes

The baling work took much longer than expected.  First I realized I should grease and lubricate my baler.  I didn't want my baler to catch on fire like the neighbor's baler did.  Not a lot to grease.  But the zerks on the PTO shaft were hard to reach.  This PTO shaft has safety shields on each end that make finding zerks harder.  But with the new grease gun I got for my birthday from Donna I got the job done.

Note the hydraulic hoses. Their story comes up later.

The chains needed lubrication.  They were all dry.

Lastly I needed to check the gear box oil level.  This was harder.  The reason: John Deere designed a metal covering over the gear box.  Six bolts, some which were hard to reach.  A several minute job took a half hour.  The result: the gear oil level was fine.

Then I needed to hook the tractor up.  Over the past year the jack holding the baler tongue up sank into the ground a little bit.  I could no longer jack the baler to the height needed to hook it to my tractor.  I had to get a short tree stump to hold the tongue up while I lowered the jack, place a block under the jack, then re-jack the baler tongue to the height needed.

Due to the safety shields, hooking the baler's PTO bar to the tractor's PTO is much harder than normal and takes longer.  But I eventually got it done.

When hooking up the baler's hydraulic lines to the tractor's quick-connects, one hydraulic line's connector wouldn't go into the tractor's quick-connect.  I had to pound on the quick-connect before it would accept the hydraulic connector.  Never had a problem with this before.

I have four hydraulic lines.  Open and close on each hydraulic cylinder.  One to open and close the bale's back door to release the bale; the other hydraulic cylinder runs a tube across the bale to release twine.

I prefer the open/close door lines to go to one handle inside the tractor and the twine tube to another.  That is because last year I made the mistake twice of grabbing the wrong handle and then opening the back door when I meant to twine the bale.  Once the door is opened it is no longer possible to twine the bale.  I put different colored bread wire wrappers on the hydraulic lines and wrote the color/line scheme on a small piece of paper and left it in the tractor's cab.

The problem: when it needed it I could not find the paper.  I looked everywhere.  So I followed the hydraulic lines and hooked them to the tractor.  (See first photo.)

Then I tested the lines.  The twine tube moved a little, then quit.  The open/close door didn't work and on top of that, the hydraulic line popped out of the touchy quick-connect.  I tried again.  Same result.  I tried something else.  Same result.  I re-looked at the lines and where they were hooked up.  Looked fine.  And no leaks anywhere.  Still no idea why the one line pops out of its quick-connect.

So I called Wyatt once again.   When he came he found I had mixed the hydraulic lines.  One open/close door and one twine line to a lever.  The lines pass though a short shield and I apparently lost track when the lines shifted position.

The twine tube now worked.

The open/close door did not.  The bad line kept popping out.  So we checked the baler in case something was impeding the door.  Nothing.

To test the quick-connect I suggested switching the lines to use the opposite levers.  The open/close door now worked.  And the twine tube worked without popping out of the quick-connect.  I had bought the two new connectors and one of the new connectors just didn't like that particular quick-connect.  Why?  Who knows.  But I wanted the functions to work with different levers.  So I switch connectors between the two hoses so I could connect the lines to the levers I wanted.

To avoid missing pieces of papers in the future I plan to get spray paint and mark each quick-connect and its line with a particular color.

In between time of greasing and lubricating the balers, the cattle were eating grass in the NE pasture.  Once I was done with the baler I planned to move the cattle to the middle pasture.  But cow number 7 (or Maria [from the Sound of Music as Donna's daughter now named cow number 7... "How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find the word that means Maria?") had different ideas.  I looked over and saw her trying to force her way through my chain link gates between the pasture and the fruit tree/garden area.  She had her head and neck through the opening she made in the gate and was trying to force her body through the gate.

Change of plans.  Time to move the cattle now.  First I herded Maria from the gate and towards the north pasture gate.  As I opened the north pasture gate Maria headed back to the chain link gate.  Eventually I got the cattle over to the middle pasture and their salt blocks moved to be with them.

By now it was 3 pm.  I planned to have John's field baled no later than 1 pm.

When I cut the twine on the first bale the twine remaining on the baler slide down the tube.  With the design it is hard to reach and thread the twine back in the tube.  I had to crawl under the baler and use a long wire to push the twine back down the tube.

Then I had a rope problem.  The twine cutter is old and dull and doesn't work automatically.  I had a long rope that reaches into the tractor's cab that I use to cut the twine.  The rope fell out of the cab so I had to get out and put it back in.  I tied the end of the rope to a wrench I had.  A little later the rope somehow snagged on a tractor's wheel and pulled the rope and wrench out of the cab.  Fortunately it did not break the cab's window.  I had to unwrap the rope from around the wheel's axle.  After this I had no problems with the rope.

The hay is fine and short to medium length.  So the windrows were not always an interlocking sheet drawn into the baler.  For slightly wider windrows the baler didn't always suck in all the hay - especially on corners - and I had to go over part of the windrows a second time.

I was working on my fourth bale when I saw that not all of the hay was being picked up.  Earlier I had adjusted the baler's pickup level up as on uneven ground the tines occasionally would dig into the ground.  I readjusted the pickup lower.  Still left hay. I put the pickup even lower.  Still left hay.  I tried this and that and still had left hay.  Then I reached a thick windrow and hay was being pushed by the baler.  I got out and looked.  The pickup tines were still turning.

Inside the baler was a bale about 1/5 a full size.  Plus lots of loose hay.  So I dumped the bale.  After a half dozen attempt as the open/close door didn't want to open until it finally did.  This has happened in the past when I had a partial bale to unload.  With the partial bale out of the baler I worked to remove the loose hay still inside and on the baler's belt.  Not the quickest or easiest thing to do when I didn't want to get inside the baler and instead had to go here and there on the outside to reach what hay I could and also push against the belts to wiggle them to release and drop hay.

I went on to finish the field making a few more bales successfully.  Then I went back and unrolled that 1/5 bale.  The bale unrolls only one way and naturally that way was in a direction that made picking the hay up again more difficult.

But I did.

I had about a third of a bale in the baler when I finished John's field.  Three hours later!

It was now 6:15 pm.   The weather forecast earlier had a 20% of scattered rain showers.  Some clouds were in the sky, but no rain clouds.  I decided to move my irrigation lines now and then continue to bale my field.

I was changing shoes to boots when Donna came to see if I was having a better day than yesterday.  Minutes after she arrived a few rain drops fell.  No blue rain clouds so I wasn't concerned.  Then it began to rain harder.  Then it poured down water.  From where?  No rain clouds, just some white clouds.

It rained hard for 10 to 15 minutes.  Donna went home to close her house windows.  She later said she didn't get any rain.  The line of rain quit a half mile from her house. I went uptown a little later and noticed the area that got rain was about 5 miles wide.  Naturally with my field cut it rained over me when normally I am the area that doesn't get rain when everyone else does.

I checked my field.  The rain soaked all the water through the windrows. They were soaked.  That means tomorrow is a drying day (unless more rain suddenly happens).  Then the next day I will have to rake my entire field (a long day of work) to turn over my windrows so the bottom gets dried out.  Then after another day of drying I can bale.

So much for finishing my haying today or tomorrow.

My luck has got to change.