Irrigation and hay work continues

Each project would be enough to do on a hot and windy day, but I had two big projects today.

The first project was to move the north sprinkler line from the far west side of the ranch over to the far east side.  A long way.  Also for this new location, the line wraps around to also water part of the NE pasture, so more pipes needed to be added to the sprinkler line.  I haven't hooked up the pipes once the line crosses the driveway as I plan to do that just before I open the valve to begin watering using that line.  I haven't laid all the pipes yet because of the other major project of the day: cleaning up the loose hay in the NE pasture from the failed attempt to re-bale several broken bales.

This area may not look like much but it is two bales worth of hay spread out, and once I raked and loaded it into the pickup, the hay filled the pickup bed four times.

Normally I keep some open space in the barn for an unforeseen event.  The first was when Donna decided to completely clean out her hayshed of the old hay. I would take her old hay for bedding for the cattle this Winter and if they ate some of the hay, fine.  She had more than I expected, but I could handle it.

But then I had this year's problems with my hay crop.  I had four pickup loads of loose hay from what was in the NE pasture.  I still have probably a pickup load or two of loose hay still in the hayfield.  While I have some room left in the barn the space is getting small and I have to pile the hay up high. The smaller area means more work to make the hay fit instead of just shoveling the hay out of the pickup and into the barn.

Below is the result of one pickup load of hay.

It was dark by the time I unloaded the fourth pickup load.  The NE pasture was now open to having irrigation pipes and watering.  However, some of the loose hay in the hayfield is where the water would go if I turned the sprinklers on.  I just couldn't that area cleaned before dark.

So, I turned off the irrigation pump for the night.  The current area being watered had been watered a few hours over one day, and one day of water is plenty.

So the plan for tomorrow is to get the rest of the loose hay raked and put into the barn and then the irrigation turned back on.  It is hot and dry and the ground needs watering.  While it is eastern Montana that is in a severe drought, we are not.  Yet.  The weather forecast is for 90s all this coming week and no rain.  So we are heading in the direction of drought.  While my photos show green, when riding my bicycle I see a number of fields in the area drying up and turning brown.

With the heat and wind and work today I stopped a number of times and took time to drink and drink and drink water.  With all the water I drank I still hardly peed.