Moving Donna's and Wyatt's hay.

Now that I baled the hay it was time to get the hay into my hayshed.

For Donna's 12 bales (11 as I moved one in my baler when finished), my neighbor Curtis had his truck.   We hauled three bales at a time.  Curtis thought we could stack the bales two high and we could carry 5 at a time.  I did a test and put 4 on his truck.  Even though we put a strap over the fourth bale, he only drove a short distance across the uneven field and the bale fell off.  The bale stayed together but the bounce loosened the twine a little bit.  So we stuck with three bales at a time.  With only 11 bales to move it added only one more trip.

Unloading the bales was easy.  I could leave my tractor in Donna's field.

The bale still on the truck is the one that had fallen and bounced earlier.

Wyatt's 42 bales meant 42 trips from his field to my hayshed.  I moved the cattle into the middle pasture so I could leave the south gate open to Wyatt's field, and also the gate between the south pasture and the hayfield.  I still had the bad leg cow and the other cow and calf in the north pasture so I had to drive through the hayfield to the NE pasture to reach the hayshed.  Below you can see the "road" that was created across the hayfield.  The new hayfield's alfalfa and grass roots are not deep yet and the plants got worn out.  The pasture grass was flattened but the grass will come back there.

Wyatt's field is rough from all the pocket gopher mounds.  I could only move three bales an hour.  So 14 hours to move all the bales.  Midway through the last day I discovered the bull standing in the hayfield by the gate furiously eating the new alfalfa and grass.  Six cows were in the south pasture.  Other cows and calves were across the gate in the middle pasture not happy they were not in the south pasture.  The river level is low and the 7 must have walked in the river around the fence.

Using the tractor I finally herded the bull back into the south pasture.  I ran and closed both gates.  Then I tried to get the bull and cows to go back to the middle pasture.  Nope.  The middle pasture cattle tried to get to the south pasture when I opened the gate.  I called Donna and she came and handled the gate as I herded the south pasture cattle back to the middle pasture.   We were about to leave when here came another cow from the back of the south pasture.  Great. I forgot to count that all the cattle were in the middle pasture.  I got cow #60 back into the middle pasture. I counted.  One cow short.  And on cue, here came Maria (cow #7) waddling from back of the south pasture.  (I think she had come from checking on the weed hay).

Once I got Maria into the middle pasture I continued to move bales from Wyatt's field.  I finished moving the last bale just before dark.   The cattle had stayed in the middle pasture until the next day.  With the outside gates closed it didn't matter which pasture they were in.  They can now move freely between the south and middle pastures and save me from having to go out and open a gate when half the herd crosses via the river and the half herd that remains complains.


The sad story continues with another episode tomorrow.