Shortly before 9 am I heard the cattle mooing. Mooing in a way that something was up. I looked out and saw well over half the herd had broken through a fence and were now in the south pasture with the rest mooing and lining up to go through the fence. Yes, the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. I had been planning to let the cattle into the south pasture either this afternoon or in a day or two depending on getting a better look at the hayfield once I finished restacking my hay bales. There is still stuff to eat in the hayfield even though it had been eaten down pretty well. Once again the cattle forced my hand. Most likely Maria, cow #7.
I went out as one cow was still in the hayfield. Apparently she didn't see how the other cattle got through the fence, or she didn't want to go through the fence. She stood at the gate to the middle pasture and looked at the cows in the south pasture and mooed. I opened a gate to the south pasture and eventually she came over and through the gate.
I checked and found two old wooden fence posts were broken, The fence leaned down / over. Also a top barb wire was broken between two posts. The cattle jumped over the broken fence. You know, back this Winter my planned fence rebuilds for this year were the NE pasture fence by the road, the corral to hayshed fence, and the hayfield / south pasture fence. You know how my year has gone. I was lucky to have completed the NE pasture fence rebuild and half of the corral to hayshed fence rebuild. The hayfield / south pasture fence? Looks like next year.
The main challenge for the day was completing the hay bale move into the hayshed. I only had 18 bales left to move. Piece of cake to finish, right? Wrong! When I checked on the hay and tractor in the morning I found the right front tractor tire was flat. Completely flat.
You have got to be kidding me!!!
Yesterday I had driven only around a small area moving hay bales. But I must have driven over a small nail or something to cause my tire to go flat. I had to get groceries in the morning so I brought along my portable air tank and filled it. Someday I will have to buy an air compressor. It ended up taking two tanks of air to re-inflate my tractor tire.
No sound of air escaping. And it is Sunday and the tire repair stores are closed. So I moved the hay bales. With an urgency as I didn't know how long the tire would stay inflated. The problem was I again had some bad bales that wanted to fall apart, or bales where the twine loosened when I lifted the bales and started to unravel. I had to take time to re-wrap as best I could the bales where I could re-wrap the twine. Else the bales would start to flake and fall apart. I had two bales that started to fall apart as soon as I lifted them. One bale lost 1/5 of itself immediately. The other bale I knew to be a really dicey bale. But I had a small spot and this was the only bale that would fit. By the time I set the bale in the spot only a fifth to a fourth of the bale remained. Then I had to get the pickup and pick up the part of the bale that flaked and fell off outside the hayshed entrance hampering movement. I filled a pickup bed with this loose hay and later put it in the barn.
I eventually moved all the hay bales. Notice I didn't say I got all the bales inside the hayshed. I needed three rows to stack all the bales as in the second to last row I could only have 3-2-1 levels instead of my normal 4-3-2 levels. That mean I had to have a third row for the last three bales. This last row of three went past the hayshed entrance by a foot or two. So I can't close the hayshed gate. Later I will also have to hang/drape a tarp over the last row of bales as I don't trust the barley/oats/peas loose bales to shed water like a normal large round bale.
Here is the view of the bales taken this morning in the sunlight. It was getting dark when I finished so I don't yet have a final photo of the bales in the hayshed.
I still have lots of loose hay to pick up tomorrow from where the bales used to sit. And while the tractor tire stayed inflated all day, most likely I will have to take it in to be fixed tomorrow.
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