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.
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