Baling my hay

Let me try this again.   I was so tired from baling my hay I didn't get to writing this post until finally last night.  Just before I finished writing this post my internet failed.  So I went to bed.  Here it is another night.


After 3 1/2 days of work I finally finished baling my hay.   The task should take a day, or a little above a day, but this year has been a challenge.

The first day of baling didn't get a start until about 2 pm.  First I had to move the cow and calf away that were laying next to the baler.

Then I had to grease the hay baler's zircs.   Then I wasn't sure if my netwrap was enough.  I had bought another roll recently and now I placed the new roll in the baler's extra roll location.

The baler has four hydraulic hoses.  A pair for the hay pickup feeder, and another pair to open and close the back (gate) to unload the bale of hay.  Last year I forgot to mark the hoses with paint so in the future I would immediately know which of the tractor's hydraulic fittings to attach the hoses.   My first guess was correct as to where to attach the hoses.  So I painted the hose fittings to match the tractor's colors.  I used small model paint jars. For the first paint jar I used I dropped the jar's white lid on the ground.  As usual since my accident, if I drop something to the ground I can't find it.  I looked and looked.  Eventually I gave up and marked the spot.  The next morning when I was waiting for my uncle to wake up I looked again.  Again I could not find it.  Once again the fallen object disappears for good.  A strange world I live in these days.

Then it was off to bale my hay.   Last year when I first used the baler the net wrap somehow got sucked into the first roll of hay as the bale was being made and it used up all of the roll of net wrap.  This time I stopped and checked a number of times and it was not happening this year.   Once the bale was at the finished size the baler wrapped the bale.  Before unloading the bale I checked between the rubber rollers at the bale.  The bale did not appear to be net wrapped.  I opened the back of the baler and found that the rubber round roller was wrapped in net wrap. How the net wrapping works is the baler has two "small" rollers (one roller is metal and the other is rubber) the length of the net wrap.  The net wrap is fed through the two rollers into the baler and around the hay bale.  This time the net wrap stuck to the rubber roller and did not go around the hay bale.  Later I read the trouble shooting section of the baler's manual and it indicated that when the baler sits for a long period of time the net wrap can get stuck to the rubber roller.  Yup.  That happened to me this time.

Because the roller is rubber one must be very careful to remove the net wrap from the roller as cutting the roller can be damaging if the rubber gets cut.  So I had to go get a knife and a scissors to carefully remove the net wrap from the roll.  I did.  Then I had some net wrap that went between the two rollers.  The roller are right against each other and only the top rubber roller can be rotated by hand.  And it is not easy to do.  It requires both hands to turn the roller.  But I needed one hand to pull on the net wrap as I turned the roller.  Again, hard to do.  I eventually got most of the net wrap out.  But some net wrap was still between the rollers and bunched behind them.  Again a difficult task as the opening beyond the rollers is very small.  I kind of could barely get the end of the knife through the opening to try to carefully cut the bunched net wrap.

After over an hour I finally got over 99% of the net wrapped removed.  The rest disappeared once I rewrapped the bale.

To re-wrap the bale I had to setup the net wrap to feed it through the roller again.

Here are the instructions from the manual: http://manuals.deere.com/omview/OME126850_19/OUO6039_0000008_19_17OCT00_1.htm

The hard part is step 5 and "F" in the illustration where you get a little of the net wrap through the two rollers.  I hadn't seen the YouTube video on how to do it by using the lever. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO6o73SsVZA) So I was trying to turn the roll by hand.  Two hands on the roller to turn it.  But I needed one hand to push the net wrap between the rollers.  I couldn't do it.  I went to get Curtis for help.  He was not home as he was out on his motorcycle.  I tried Tye.  He wasn't home. Rusty wasn't home.  I called Donna.  She was on her riding lawnmower and didn't answer her phone.  So I went and tried and tried and tried over and over again.  Finally I got the net wrap started in the rollers.  Then I was able to correctly net wrap and unload the hay bale.  It took me over two hours to cut the net wrap, restart the roll of net wrap, then net wrap and unload the hay bale.  This was all frustrating.

On to the second hay bale.  This time the bale was net wrapped correctly.  But when I went to open the baler to unload the bale the controller claimed the bale was too big.  The back end (gate) of the baler wouldn't completely open.  Again and again I tried.  Finally I drove back home to where I had unloaded the first hay bale.  I went and got a pry bar to maybe push the back gate open.  Nope.  I couldn't do it.

I tried to open the gate.  I tried to close the gate.  I tried to open the gate.  Each time very slowly the gate would open a bit more.  After a while I mostly had the gate open.  I drove and stopped the tractor to try to get the bale to roll out.  Over and over.  Finally the bale came out.   The net wrap was partially torn off the bale.

On the left is bale number 2.  On the right is bale number 1.  Bale number 1 is how the bale should look and be wrapped.  I figure that maybe if I am careful when transporting the bale later that I could get it (mostly) into the hayshed.

Then on to bale number 3.  Again when I went to unload the bale the gate wouldn't open completely and the baler controller said the bale was too large.  After a number of retries the bale finally came out.  Again the net wrap was partially torn off.  Again, I decided to leave the bale and later see if I could transport it to the hayshed.

On to bale number 4.  Again the gate didn't want to open.  This time I completely tore the net wrap off the bale once the bale came out of the baler.  I had to physically unroll the hay bale so I could re-pickup the hay into the baler.

On the controller one can set the maximum bale size.  I have it set at 60 (inches) the maximum amount.  It worked fine last year.  I wanted to change the maximum bale size but I couldn't find how to do so in the manual.   Donna showed up when I was looking and looking in the manual.  I'll tell you...by now I was in a mood.   Finally I found how to change the maximum size.  Most controller setting use options 1 through 26 (or greater) to change them.  Not the baler size.  It is changed using a different button.  Go figure.  I changed the max size down one level to 59.5.

I then re-picked up the hay from bale 4 back into the baler.  I was able to unload the bale without tearing the net wrap.

Bale number 5.  Same thing.  No net wrap tear.  I changed the max setting down one more level to 59.  Same thing.  I was getting the bale out without a net wrap tear, but it was a struggle as the gate didn't want to completely open.

My uncle earlier thought he would arrive at my hours in a few hours from now.  So I continued my struggle until he would arrive.

I had another problem.  The baler's hay pickup mechanism is controlled by a hydraulic lever.  But the pickup didn't want to go all the way to the ground that I wanted.  Most of the hay from the windrow was getting picked up so I didn't do anything else as the manual seemed to indicate I had to re-bolt the pickup's small wheels to change the height.  When I re-picked up bale 4 I left a good amount on the ground.  Well, after a few more bales I decided I had to change the height even if it meant re-bolting stuff.  I looked at the manual on how to do this.  Then I looked some more in the manual about the pickup.  In another chapter (Chapter 45) I found a section that described a manual crank that also adjusted the pickup's height. 

Then my memory came back to me.  Last year I had used that manual crank to completely adjust the pickup's height.  So now I used the manual crank and got the pickup's height to the level I wanted.  I had picked up four windrows of hay so far, so I went back and went over all four rows again.  I also went over where I had picked up bale 4.  By the time I finished I had picked up 3/4's of a bale of hay.

I was able to make a few more bales of hay by the time my uncle Rick arrived.  For the day I made 10 bales of hay in almost 7 hours of work.

A poor amount of work.  It was a miserable day of baling hay.  The only thing good about the day was chatting with my uncle as I hadn't seen or talked with him for a couple of years since he last visited me.