Hay from Donna and Wyatt

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Donna offered her hay as I now needed hay.

No problems cutting her field.

The problems were when I baled her hay.  First off, I used the wrong lever after I made my first hay bale.  For all my bales of weed hay I did not wrap twine around the bale and went for the lever to dump the bale.  For the first bale at Donna's place that's what I did.  I needed to twine the bale first as her grass was shorter than an alfalfa/grass mix.   The shorter grass would not hold together without twine.  Too late.  I pushed the wrong lever.

I had to re-bale the whole bale.  First I had to unroll the bale.  I had to use the tractor's loader arms to initially move the bale.  After a few revolutions I was able to manually push the bale to unroll the hay.  Manually unrolling the bale allowed the row to be "smooth" instead of having clumps when pushing it with the tractor.  Still the act of feeding the hay back into baler was a pain as several times the hay would clog in the baler's pickup and I would have to stop and yank and pull the hay from the pickup and try to smooth the intake row.  I had to make many passes to get all the hay back into the baler.

Normally it would take me 40 to 45 minutes to make a bale from Donna's windrows.  I didn't have my first bale until after two and a half hours.  Needless to say I didn't make the 'wrong lever' mistake again this year.  (I better not jinx myself as I have one more bale to make tomorrow.)

Because I needed Curtis to help me haul the hay from Donna's place to my place, I would line up each bale I made in Donna's field near the road.  I was starting to make the ninth bale when the baler's pickup was kicking up dirt.  When I got out to see why I found the baler's tire was flat.  Again?!  The same tire?!

This happened right at 6 pm.  When do the tire repair shops close for the day?  6 pm.  I had to wait until the next morning to fix the flat.  The repair shop said there was a hole in the tube and a hole in the tire and they patched both.  No idea what caused the hole.  Donna keeps a clean field so I have no idea.

Donna's jack is nicer than my old bottle jack. I now have a new jack like this one thanks to Donna.

Back to baling once I got the tire back on the baler.  I had four bales left to make.  Three bales I placed together in the middle of the field closer to where I was baling.  The fourth bale I carried in the baler as I drove home.  I drove slowly as the paved road had cracks and was bumpy.

I made it to my driveway with no problems.  *Whew*   I had to stop and open the gate by the garage.  As I drove through the gate and into the north pasture the baler was bouncing up and down like the tire was flat.  It was!!!!  I couldn't believe it.  Not again?!!!

The tire repair shop was surprised to see me after only a few hours.  I told them they needed to find the problem.   They did.   The tire had a cut in the sidewall.  With the weight of a full bale in the baler the tube would get in the cut and pinch the tube and cause a flat.  This explains why the flat tires happened this year.  Other years I dumped the bale once it was fully formed and move on to making the next bale.  The shop could patch the tire but since the patch is on the tire's sidewall no guarantee how long the patch would hold.   I spent $118 and bought a new tire.

New $118 tire.

Then it was on to finally baling Wyatt's field.  I was a day late and his hay was getting dry.

I had half of the fourth bale made when the baler started to make a loud squealing sound.  The right outer large belt had twisted and twisted and jammed.  I had to dump the bale.  No matter how opened or closed the baler was, the belt had no slack for me to try to untwist it.  I was closer to Wyatt's house than my house so I went there first.   With his tractor he pulled up on the baler's tensioning arm and this gave us a little slack.  Between the two of us we eventually got the belt untwisted.  I did not have to unlace the belt which was a good thing as the extra tension from the twisting did a number on the belt's laces.  I still could use the belt but a new 'to-do" project is to enhance the belt's laces in the future.

I think I figured out why the belt can get twisted.  When the hay windrow is not wide, and I drive for an extended time on one side and not wobble back and forth, the hay doesn't make it all the way across the baler and one side of the bale is smaller than the rest of the bale.  This causes the belt to tilt sideways and eventually twist as it rotates.  Once I figured this out and would see the few times when a bale was "off" I would move the hay pickup over and the incoming hay would fill and make the bale level all the across.

I started baling Wyatt's hay on a Thursday afternoon and finished on Saturday afternoon.  I made 42 and 1/2 bales.


My sad saga is not over yet... It continues.