Starting to bale the hay

Today the baling of the hay started.  First up was to make some small bales to store in my barn.  Sometimes feeding small bales to the cattle in between the large bales is a good thing.  I had around 100 bales left from last year and I figured I could fit 140 more bales in the barn.  If I packed the barn wall to wall I once fit near 300 bales in the barn.

To make small bales I needed Donna's help.  Last year when she made some small bales for me during my second hay cutting her baler's knotters quit working.  She later got them fixed.  She was able to bale her first cutting this year in July.  No problem then to bale my field.  Well...  my field may have a curse on second haying cutting work.  After the first bale her baler's knotter started to not work.  First the right knotter wouldn't accurately knot the right twine.  Bad bale.  Donna's fixed it.  A good bale, then a bad bale.  Then the knotting problem shifted to the left knotter when the right knotter started to work.  Bad bale after bad bale.  Donna made a few adjustments.  Then it seemed like the twine was bad.  When I tried pull the twine to tie it tight before the bale was dropped from the baler, the twine would break.  Another adjustment to adjust how tight the twine would wrap around the bales and we started to get good bales.  But we didn't trust the baler.  So I walked behind the baler and watched the knotters after they cut the twine and repositioned the twine to start a new bale.  After this we only had two or three bad bales.  I never worked with a small baler before and didn't know how they and the knotters worked.  As I learned a bit I now knew what to watch for and for those two or three bad bales caught the problem right away.

So for the 146 bales we made I walked behind the baler and watched the knotters.  In the end I ended up with a little over 130 good bales.

Close up view of the two knotters.

Depending on the direction I had sun or shade.  And when going east or south the wind wouldn't blow the dust and dirt away so it was hard to see the knotters.

One of the bad bales that I plan to later pickup with my large baler.

After we were done making small bales I wanted to put them in the barn before I started to do more raking of hay or making my large bales.  While Donna went home to clean off and store her baler I went and hauled to the barn some of the closer bales at the north end of the hayfield.  I have a handcart that can carry two bales at time.  

I had half the planned bales hauled to the barn when one of the cart's tire came off the wheel.  Oh.. that is why there is duct tape around the tire.

The tire is odd and I don't have another one.  Under the duct tape I seen someone in the past had ran a wire through the break to hold the tire together and then duct taped that spot.  Well...   Okay, I drilled some holes into the tire and rewired it together.  That took a bit to do, but it looked like the tire would stay on the wheel.  Then I duct taped it some more.  I was able to haul the rest of the closer bales.  I had hauled almost 30 bales.

Then Donna showed up again.  She came to drive my pickup down the row of bales while I loaded them in the pickup.  I was going to say "while I tossed them into the pickup" but I'm getting older and the bales heavier.  Also, now I only stacked the bales three high on the pickup and not four high.  Why stack the bales so high when I can just go out again to get another load of bales.  I believe we had three pickup loads of bales.  The fourth pickup load only carried 6 bales.  It was dark when we finished, but I now have all the good small bales in the barn.  The bad bales will be raked to loosen them up so they can be easily baled by the large baler.

I have some videos of the baling.  I will add them to another post as I doubt Blogger has fixed their emailing of posts problem when the post includes Youtube videos.