Hot and cloud

I've been trying finish spraying weeds on these hot days.  In the middle pasture, as I pulled most all of the remaining yarrow weeds, I thought I only had some weeds left to spray and that I could do that on one tank of herbicide.  Wrong!  The longest it ever took me to go through a tank of herbicide was 3 hours.  I thought maybe it could take me almost that long to go through the middle pasture.  It took me 4 hours and I only covered a third of the pasture.  I kept finding miscellaneous small weeds.  One here, one there.  I move irrigation pipes at 8 pm.  I didn't finish spraying until a little after 9 pm.  As a result I didn't finish moving irrigation pipes until after dark.

So yesterday I started spraying earlier.  Once again I found a number of small miscellaneous weeds.  It took me 3 1/2 hours this time.  Again I covered only a third of the pasture.  I got the irrigation lines moved on time this time.  Of course, after earlier I had noticed that this year I hadn't any sprinklers go bad, I had a sprinkler go bad.  I got it changed before dark.

Today was warmer than usual.  97 for a high temperature.  Since it was the last day of the month I also had some bicycle miles to ride to make my monthly goal.  By afternoon it was too hot to go and spray weeds.  I decided to delay spraying till tomorrow.

Last night I heard a cat fight.  I couldn't find where it happened.  Today Daisy has a minor limp on her front leg.  Since I didn't spray weeds we spent time together this afternoon.  This evening she is laying nearby instead of going outside for a little while like usual.

This evening I thought we possibly could get a rainstorm.  But no, just a cloud that passed by.

Cattle behavior

Yesterday I rotated the cattle from the north pasture to the south pasture.  I had sprayed 99% of that pasture to get rid of weeds and it was time to rotate the cattle.  As I carried their salt blocks across the middle pasture the cattle came running when they saw I was walking to the south pasture gate, which I had already opened.  I turned and watched the initial cattle as they approached me.  They ran around me, with Panda in the lead, naturally.  I turned and continued to walk on when all of a sudden one cow's head hit my upper leg hard.  I was walking on the path and cow #8 apparently wanted me out of the way.  I had a few choice words for cow 8 and, even though I was holding the salt blocks, I moved and blocked her access to the gate.  She ran here and there to get around me.  Naturally as I was still carrying the salt blocks, and other cattle were coming by, I couldn't eventually stop her.  But she got the idea that I was not happy with her behavior.

I am trapping pocket gophers in the south pasture.  I figured the cattle may mess with my metal rods holding the traps in place so they coyotes don't steal any more traps.  This morning - yup - I found three of the five rods bent or knocked over.  I did catch one pocket gopher in a trap that the cattle didn't mess with.

I removed all the traps from the south pasture.  I'll have to wait until I later rotate the cattle out of the south pasture before I reset the traps to catch more pocket gophers.  I noticed a few fresh dirt mounds in the middle pasture and set three traps there.  By evening I caught two more pocket gophers.

In the evening I noticed the irrigation shed door was closed.  With the recent hot weather I left the door open so the pump doesn't over heat and shut down.  I have stuff in the doorway so the cattle don't do inside the shed.  Since I don't have my rods holding traps for the cattle to play with, they decided to knock over and removed the stick I have holding the door open.  Then they closed the door.  Tomorrow I will see if they do that again.

I still have to spray weeds in the middle pasture.  Spraying now is not the best time as Spring and Fall are the best times.  But with all my acres, spraying when I have the time is what I have to do.  This year I want to spray 100% of the property.  It has been a few years since I sprayed 100%, and since I am still in the multi-year spraying mode, going a few years of partial spraying is allowing the weeds to come back in force in some areas.  Lots of yarrow is going to seed now.  Spraying probably won't kill the yarrow as the plant is going dormant.  When I see yarrow I spray it, but the goal is to pull the yarrow weeds and collect the seeds to dispose of, whether or not I spray the weed.   I have spent part time pulling yarrow and today I think I got rid of 99% of yarrow from the middle pasture.  The rest of the weeds can be sprayed and killed, though in July it takes longer for the weeds to be affected.

Still moving irrigation pipes twice a day.  I am heading back across the hayfield and over half way on the return to the beginning.

Walnut trees in 2020

Here are a few photos of my English walnut trees.  Looks like I will have walnuts again this year.  After last year's crop I now know I need to harvest the walnuts in September to maybe early October.

The smaller English walnut tree is also doing very well this year.   Daisy was sitting under the tree until I came over to take a photo of her.

Cattle photos

Now that the irrigation sprinklers are in the NE pasture, and Diamond's calf is a little more active, it was time to let Diamond and Maria and their calves out into the rest of the pastures to join the herd.

Here are photos of Diamond and Maria in the morning before I let them out to join the rest of the herd.

Maria and her calf

Photos of the cattle - mostly the calves - after I let the herd come from the middle pasture to the north pasture to join up with Diamond and Maria.  Diamond and Maria and their calves were not in the photos as Toby the bull kept checking Diamond or Maria out.

"Maria, do you need my loving?"

then,

"Diamond, do you need my loving?"

then back to Maria,

"Maria, do you need my loving now?"

Over and over the rest of the day.  Toby was near Diamond then Maria, then back again.   Well, this will keep him occupied for a while as neither cow will come into heat for a while.

The calves seem to be doing fine, and gaining weight.

This one of Speckle's twin calves.  She is growing nicely.

The other one of Speckle's twin calves.

Mama and her calf

When I let the herd come from the middle pasture to the north pasture I discovered Red was in the south pasture.  She had river walked.  Now she wanted to come join the rest of the cows in the north pasture and paced the fence and gate until I walked over and opened the gate.  When pacing sometimes she would run back and forth.  When she had to cross the middle pasture to the north pasture, she walked.  Red is so fat she couldn't run anymore.

Another odd day

Another day making me believe I live in a different world/universe than where I was born.

I sprayed weeds this afternoon.  In the south pasture.  Because I have the irrigation going in the hayfield I walked through the north and middle pastures to get to the south pasture.  The cattle in the middle pasture saw me enter the middle pasture through the gate and came running as they thought I planned on letting them into the north pasture.  They have plenty to eat in the middle pasture and can stay there a few more days.

When I opened the gate to the south pasture the gate came off the top bolt holding it to the railroad tie.  Strange, as the bottom bolt goes up and the top bolt goes down.  That way the gate doesn't come off unless the top bolt's nut is unscrewed and the bolt taken out.  Somehow the bolt was loose and turned sideways.  That still shouldn't release the gate as the sideways turn can only happen so much when in the gate's slot.  But it did.

Of course the cattle all came running as they now thought I may let them into the south pasture. I was also wearing a backpack sprayer full of water and herbicide.  It was difficult to work on the gate so I had to take the backpack off and set it on the ground.  Difficult and heavy to do when full of water and herbicide.

I tried to get the gate back in place.  I tried to force the gate back onto the sideways turned top bolt.  Of course it didn't want to go back on.  The next I knew I had lifted the gate off the bottom bolt.  When I went to put the gate back onto the bottom bolt - an easy fix - the gate wouldn't go onto the bolt.  The bottom bolt was bent.  I didn't bend it.  The bend went towards the railroad tie and there was now no room to fit the gate back onto the bolt.  Again, I didn't bend the bolt as it was too firm to bend.  How I got the gate off the bolt, I don't know.

The cattle still wanted through the gate and were mooing.  I gave them a chewing out and told them to knock it off.  Most cattle then walked off to go get a drink of water.  Four cows remained.  Of course they were: Beulah, Panda, Red and Sugar.  The four instigators.  I had to use a dead branch to help the gate remain upright and I hoped the cows wouldn't push on the gate and knock it over as I had to go back home to get a wrench and a sledgehammer.

When I left the gate the cows did also.  When I returned I had to use the sledgehammer to pound repeatedly on the bottom bolt to straighten it.  It took some effort.  I could now get the gate back on the bottom bolt.  The top bolt... I took the nut off and removed the bolt.  I tried to put the bolt into the gate connection.   The connection had two holes and the bolt went in one hole but was off-kilter to go into the other hole.  What?

It took some effort to get the bolt into the gate's connector and also back into the railroad tie but eventually I did.  And I got the gate back in location and working again.


In the evening after I moved the irrigation sprinkler lines I checked my pocket gopher traps.  I caught two more pocket gophers.  However I found another trap in an odd situation.  The trap has an "eye" screw into the top of the plastic trap.  The "eye" opening holds the one end of a wire and the other end of the wire hooks into the top of the trip mechanism.   This trap was missing the "eye" screw and the wire.  Huh?  It was like someone had removed these two pieces.  But it is extremely unlikely that happened.  Those pieces don't pop out, that is why it is a screw.  I looked in the hole where the trap was located and could not find the "eye" screw or the wire.  Because lately when something drops on the ground it often disappears.  So I didn't bother getting a magnet to find these metal pieces. They're gone, perhaps to another world.  I had another broken trap that had these pieces so I took them and put them on my pocket gopher trap.


In the morning I took an axe to the apple tree trunk I had problems with my chainsaw some weeks ago.  One part of the tree trunk cut had sparks when using the chainsaw.  I figured there may be metal or rock or something in the tree trunk.  Using the axe I found a good sized nail buried in the trunk.  And I wasn't cutting the nail in half.  I would end up cutting the nail from top to bottom.  The apple wood is dense and hard.  I got probably half of the nail exposed.  Tomorrow I plan on taking a crowbar and pulling the nail out.  That should be easier that trying to cut the entire nail out of the hard trunk.


And don't get me started on sewing today.  As I pulled the thread through the patch and pants the thread would tie itself into a knot quite often.  What?  All I am doing is pulling thread through fabric.  Why would it knot itself now?

This is a strange world I live in now.

Calf 18 - Diamond's

The last calf for the year was born this afternoon.   Before I went to check the pocket gopher traps I looked and initially thought Diamond had a calf.  No, she was standing over Maria's calf who was sleeping.   In less than an hour I came back.  Maria was back in the corral drinking water and her calf was drinking from Maria.  I happened to look over and Diamond was standing over her newborn calf who was just figuring out how to walk and also where Diamond's udder was so it could drink.

Last year Diamond had a calf on September 10.  Usually a first time mother cow can take 60 days before they go into heat again. If the bull hangs around the cow sometimes they can go into heat up to five days earlier.   So this year I expected her calf to be born the first week of August.   But Diamond must have gone into heat a little over 40 days later, not 60 days.

Or maybe she listened to me.  The past week or so, whenever I saw Diamond I would tell her she needed to have her calf now and not to wait.  I guess she listened to me.

The new calf is a male.  That is good as most likely I will have to keep the calf until next Spring before selling it.  A female calf next Spring will have to be kept separate from the bull so the female doesn't get pregnant early.

Three hours later Donna came over to help me band and ear tag the calf.  Diamond must have warned her new calf about Donna.  The calf was sleeping next to Diamond.  When Donna and I entered the corral, the calf woke up suddenly and then jumped up and ran out of the loafing shed.  My irrigation sprinkler was watering the entryway from the corral to the NE pasture and the ground was mud.  The calf went through and then so did I.    Eventually I caught up to the calf as he got slowed down when he tried to go through the irrigation pipe trailer.  I had to struggle to get him to lay down on the ground.  Once Donna - and Diamond - caught up to us Donna banded and I ear tagged the calf.

Usually the newborn calves are not so active a few hours after being born.  Maybe this one was so active since it was born on a warm day.

I'll keep Maria and Diamond separate from the other cattle for a few more days or so. Then I'll let them all be together.  Toby will like that as for a week or so now he spends every day for a while in the corner of the middle pasture, looking and mooing for Maria and Diamond who are in the corral or NE pasture.  I tell Toby that Maria and Diamond doesn't need his loving right now, but I don't think he believes me.

The newborn calf looks just like his mother.  A white face, black around the eyes, and a black spot between the eyes.  The calf's black spot looks like a heart.

Here are a couple pictures of Maria and her calf as they had to come and check out what Donna and I were doing with the newborn calf.

Irrigation started

Now that my hay has been cut and the bales stored, and the rain stopped and the temperature finally warmed up to normal, it is time to start irrigating my hayfield so I will have a second cutting.

I'm getting older.  Saturday I only set out and hooked up the irrigation mainline pipes.  I have 40 foot aluminum pipes and 21 foot steel pipes.   The steel pipes must be around twice as heavy as the aluminum pipes.  And it also seems as if the steel pipes gained weight since I last moved them last year.  After moving four steel pipes my one hip started bothering me due to carrying such heavy weight.  I used a wheelbarrow to move the rest of the steel pipes, one by one.

I had about four pipes left to move and I decided to take a rest break in the shade of a nearby evergreen tree.  My hip was still sore so I laid down to rest.  I woke up a little bit later.  I found I had used as a pillow the tree's trunk where it went out as a side root.

I started moving the sprinkler pipes but I soon discovered I forgot to bring a couple of wrenches used at times to adjust the hooks.  Since it was getting late I called it a day.

Sunday I laid out and hooked up the pipes for the two sprinkler lines and the pipes for the transition line used so I don't have to turn off the irrigation pump when I later move the two sprinkler lines.  I had a half dozen pipes to get from the other stack of pipes.  I was tired and wanted to sleep.  Even though I had slept 9 hours the night before I ended up laying down (in the house this time!) and slept hard for another hour.   It seems like I have to sleep lots these days.

Once the pipes were laid out and hooked up I started the irrigation pump.  It started right up this year.  I had left off the end plugs on all lines as I wanted to wash out the dirt and grass and pine needles so they wouldn't go up and plug the sprinklers.  Once I put all the plugs in I found the sprinklers only had two-thirds pressure.  I checked all the pipe connections and found the last pipe in the mainline had partially come loose and was leaking lots of water.  I tried to get the pipe back in to no avail.  I had to walk all the way to the irrigation pump and turn it off.  Then walk back and re-hook the pipe.  I also put into the ground at the mainline end a couple of metal rods to also help the last pipe stay in place.

This time when I started up the pump all the sprinklers had good pressure.  Initially I was complaining that nothing every works smoothly and right the first time.   Then I remembered all the problems I had last year with the check valve and first corner of the mainline pipe.  Those problems took me eight days to fix.  So an extra half hour or so was not much.

Now I am back to spending two to three hours a day moving the two sprinkler lines twice a day.  8 in the morning and 8 in the evening.  The hayfield has 11 valves so it will be 5 and 1/2 days to cross the hayfield, then another 5 1/2 days to go back.  Depending on how and dry August is I may have to go out and back once more before I move the pipes into the pastures and then do the second hay cutting.

2 minute 1 second video of my irrigation lines and my irrigation pump:  https://youtu.be/86-ac2-4np0

Storing my hay bales

On Thursday and Friday I moved my hay bales into the hayshed.  After all my time and effort in cutting and baling my hay I ended up with 74 bales.  This is the most I ever had.  Last year I had 59 bales from my first hay cutting, and that was after I fertilized the field.  It didn't seem like more hay than last year.

It turns out my hay bale totals are different because I used different balers to bale the hay.   Both balers should make a 5 ft by 64 inch long bale.  Both hay bales are 64 inches long.  While the new baler maximum size is 60 (inches?) the bale after it is net wrapped is 4 1/2 feet tall.  Not 5 feet.

The new bales look to be more dense than the old bales.  So I thought the weights may be the same.  On Friday I put a bale into my pickup and hauled it to CHS to be weighed.  The old bales would completely go side to side in the pickup's box.  The new bales had a little room on each side of the bale when it sat in the pickup box.  Again 4 1/2 feet versus 5 feet.

This year's bale's weight is lighter.  Twice I weighed my old bales the first year I had that baler.  Once for a first cutting of the hay, and the second time for the second cutting of the hay.  The first bale weighed 1180 lbs.  The second cutting's bale weighed 1460 lbs.  This new hay bale weighed 960 lbs.   Much lighter.   If I go by total weight.   59 times 1180 equals 69,620 lbs.   74 times 960 equals 71,040 lbs.  So the total weight difference is that this year's hay weighed 1,420 lbs more.


I had 14 bales left over from last year.  I moved them out of the hayshed temporarily so I could put all my new hay in the hayshed.

The hayshed is 20 feet wide.  The old bales just fit wall to wall.  And where the posts are located, the bales squeezed in.   The new bales equal 18 ft in total and that leaves a few feet on the side.  A nice fit, and no pressure on the walls.

Also the height is shorter.  13.5 feet versus 15 ft on top of the wooden pallets.  I could stack the third 5 foot bale but I had to put the bale fork in the lower part of the hay bale as the tractor loader's reach had the third bale barely going above the second bale.   No problems stacking the 4.5 foot bales.

With 74 bales it took two days to move and stack them all.  52 bales on Thursday.  22 bales on Friday.   I also moved last the three bales with poor net wrap on them.  I didn't want to try to re-bale these bales.  To keep the bales from falling apart I took some old twine I had and wound it around each bale.

This bale wasn't too bad to add twine too.

This is the bale I had re-baled last and the net wrapping still didn't work well.  I had to used a bunch of twine to hold the bale together so I could get it into the hay shed without the bale falling apart.

Here are all the bales in the hayshed.  I put the last year's bales in last.  You can see how last year's bales go from wall to wall.

With the extra bales the hayshed is mostly full.  I still have the second hay cutting to store in here.  I have a feeling the bales will be stacked coming out the front of the hayshed.

Cutting Donna's hay

Now that I finished baling my hay last Tuesday the weather forecast changed.  Before I finished baling, rain kept popping up in the forecast at the last minute.  After I was done baling the predicted rain for Friday and other days was dropped.  No more rain.  So on Wednesday morning Donna called and asked if I could cut her hay that day.  Sure.

So I spent the afternoon and part of the evening cutting her hay.  I could cut her field faster than my field, but not by much.  Her field ranges from normal to light.   Another problem with the light part of her field was that grass was not tall.  So the grass would lay on the haybine's metal deck after being cut and not get pulled out the back through the rollers. 

What gets laid on the deck and not pushed through and out the back.

Once enough grass lay there the rotating tines could then reach that grass and push it out back.  Having all that grass lay on the deck also interfered with the cutting teeth.  So not all the grass would get cut.  I had to drive the slowest to give the cutting teeth more of an opportunity to cut the grass.  Even then the windrows were light.  After 6 hours of cutting it was getting late.  And the amount of grass (hay) was not worth the effort.  So I left a fourth to a third of her field standing.

And parts of her field had lots of pocket gopher dirt mounds and that dirt would also get left on the deck and interfere with cutting the grass.   Not the greatest to have to stop at times to clean the grass and dirt from the deck.

Probably just as well I didn't cut all of her field.  Today Donna, her daughter and son-in-law spent time baling her hay.  And she had major baler problems and had trouble baling the hay.  It should have gotten all baled today, and I don't think it did.  2020 is not a good year.


The view when cutting Donna's field.   The canola is her neighbor's field.

Finished baling my hay

After over two and a half days of more work I finally finished baling my hay back on Tuesday.   In my previous post I mentioned how poorly my first day of baling went back on last Saturday.

Saturday night... actually Sunday morning at 1:20 am as I was still talking to my uncle Rick it began to rain. The rain chance had been forecasted for late Sunday night but now it had been moved up to Saturday night. Lightning was to the north and west off over the mountains.  Officially it was a trace of rain.  The next morning I had to wait longer before starting to bale my hay so the windrows would be dry.

The baler's back gate still struggled to open when unloading a hay bale.  After an hour, and after I partially tore some net wrap off a hay bale, I stopped and looked for a solution.  I talked with Wyatt to get ideas on what to look for.  Then I had Curtis watch the back gate as I struggled to open it, even without a hay bale inside.  I couldn't operate the opening lever and also stand back there to watch for a problem.   Curtis saw nothing wrong, other than the gate struggled to open.  The tractor has two hydraulic levers and I switched the hoses to the other lever.  Same problem.  Actually the gate struggled even more to open.   I switched the hoses back.   Then I switched the two hoses around.  Now the gate opened fine, but it didn't want to completely close.   So I switched the hoses back around and could close the gate with no problem.   Curtis thought maybe I had air in my hydraulic lines and that was causing the struggle.   I didn't know how to bleed the lines so I thought I would go back to baling hay.

Then when I went to unload the next bale the gate opened better.  After that I discovered if I moved the lever about three-fourths of the way, instead of all the way, the gate would open fine.  Why this made a difference - who knows?   But knowing this I was able to bale the rest of my hay and opened the gate with no problem as long as I didn't completely push the lever all the way.

I had lots of hay, and the windrows were a decent size, so my travel speed was on the slower side.  By the end of the second day I might have only baled about 40% of my hayfield.

Sunday night the weather forecast changed again.  Around 1 am the wind picked up and blew strong for a while.  The next day parts of a few windrows were blown over and were in a crooked line.  And it rained again.  Again, only officially a trace of rain.

Monday was another late start as I had to wait for the hay to dry.  In the afternoon I saw rain clouds here and there but did not get any rain on my hay.

I made good progress on the third day. I even re-baled two of the "first day" bales where the net wrap had torn when unloading the bale from the baler.

Not sure why, but after unloading the hay bale often I would have a little chaff left in the baler's belts.  On a rare occasion a little of the net wrap would tear off one side of the bale when unloading the bale from the baler.  I don't know if it was because of the chaff or whether occasionally the net wrap would somehow catch on a belt or the baler metal.   So after unloading the third bale I would check the baler to see if chaff was in the belts, and often would reach in and push the chaff out.  The next photo shows some of the chaff I pushed out each side of the baler one time.

I only had about 2% of the hay left to bale on the fourth day.  No rain Monday night.  It didn't take too long to bale the last 3 and 1/2 bales on Tuesday.  I had another previously made bale with damaged net wrap and I decided to re-bale it.

How I re-bale a hay bale is I manually unroll the entire bale.  Because occasionally the unrolled hay can be quite thick in spots, I use the pitchfork to move hay to make the "windrow" thinner.  A thick "windrow" can plug up the baler's pickup and stop it.  Which can be a pain to unclog.

As you can see below sometimes one side of the bale unwraps quicker than the other side.  So the "windrow" can go in a crooked line.

Even though I was able to adjust the pickup's level to get all of a normal windrow, re-baling a "windrow" usually means the hay pieces are smaller and therefore not all of it can be picked up.  What you see below I later raked up and hauled off in a wheelbarrow.  This was over three heaping wheelbarrow loads.

While I had almost a half of a bale before I re-baled this bale, at the end I only had one full bale in the baler.  I have found that re-baling a bale does not make another full bale.  Now with all this smaller hay, and probably denser and heavier hay, I should have in this case changed the wrapping amount to be larger.  Normally I wrap a bale 2.3 times to make sure it stays wrapped fine.  I can change the amount up to 4 (I believe).  I didn't change the amount and when I unloaded the hay the bale's composition caused the net wrap to come apart and this is what I got.  I didn't re-wrap the bale.  I figured I would deal with the bale when it came time to move it - another day.

This is the last of the hay I had added to make a full bale.  The baler tended to grind down part of the hay and not add it to the bale.  Another reason I had decided not to try to re-wrap the last bale.

So... a partial day of making hay bales.  But my day wasn't done.   The baler was covered in loose hay and chaff.  Not only did the pickup and around the belts needed to be cleaned, but the sides of the baler was covered in hay dust and chaff.  Not so good in the long run as belts and chains run the baler.  So I opened up the side doors and got my air compressor and blew all the dust and chaff out. Even though there was a little wind it seemed as if the dust and chaff would whirl around and not blow away.  So it took a number of times to completely clean the sides of the baler.   In the end I had to blow the chaff and dust off of me.

I cleaned parts of the baler with the air compressor that I don't think had been cleaned - maybe ever.  It took me some hours to completely clean the baler.  But I think it was worth the effort.

So, four days to completely bale my hay when normally it would take a day or maybe a little over a days worth of work.  What a challenge this year has been.