Raking the hay

Still working on my hay.  I had other stuff to do the past few days so I only finishing cleaning my haybine this afternoon.  The grass seed and pollen was a challenge.

Here are photos of it on top of my haybine after I was done cutting my hay.

Even though I had an air compressor to blow off stuff, it wanted to stick to the haybine.  I had to also use a wire brush to loosen the stuff up.  Also, inside the haybine, where the hay goes once it is cut, there were lots of seeds and pollen in areas.   So I crawled under there to clean that area.  I got it clean but a lot of stuff was in the air.  At the end of the cleaning I was reacting to the seeds and pollen.  I was never allergic to the seeds and pollen before this year, but I am finding I am now.   At least to how the grass grew in my hayfield this year.

Allergy to grasses is very common. Grass allergies can present in a variety of ways, including nasal symptoms (runny nose, stuffiness, sneezing), asthma, and eye symptoms (itchy, watery/red eyes). People can also have skin rashes (hives or skin welts) after exposure to grasses, but this is much less common.

My nose got stuffy and congested.  My throat started to close off and it was harder to breath.  I was wearing a t-shirt and my exposed arms got very itchy.  I tried blowing my nose.  It kept being congested.  I drank water and gargled.  No change.  I had to wash my arms with soap and water.  Then I saw the skin rashes on my arms - the hives and welts.    After an hour everything disappeared and went away, and I was back to normal.

After I put the haybine away I checked the hay rows.  The top looked dry and fine with baling the hay into bales tomorrow.  But then I looked underneath the hay rows.  The hay was greener.  Most of it was dry enough to bale, but not all of it was.  A number of areas were still wet grass.  Maybe 5% was wet.  Ummm... not good.  Last Winter one of the large hay bales had big sections of moldy hay.  I must have had an area that still had wet grass when I baled the hay.   I don't want that again this Winter.

Because the hay rows are decent sized, I didn't plan to rake the hay as I didn't need larger hay rows before baling.  And I didn't want to spend the time raking the hay.   But that changed once I saw wet spots in some parts of the hay.   With rain in the forecast starting Sunday I am running out of time I can continue to wait. 

So I started raking.   If I had known I would be raking the hay I would have skip doing stuff earlier today and skipped some stuff other days.   I didn't start raking until around 7 pm.   I still hoped to only do a few rows.  Then I thought I would switch and then just rake the hay cut the second day of cutting.  But starting in the middle didn't work as I would have had to rake three rows together to then give me room to move other rows.  Two rows together looked to be all my baler could handle.  I went back to the outer rows.

Still I thought I would only do a dozen or so rows.  But then on occasion the hay rake would stop raking the hay.  I was raking large rows, and if the hay was all dry there would be no problem.   But 8 times the rake stopped turning. I have never had that happen to my hay raking over all these years of raking.  I would have to get out of the tractor and pull the hay away from the rake.   And guess what, my bare arms started to itch slightly from the hay.  What is with this allergy?!!   I couldn't tell or predict areas that were a problem where wet hay was underneath the row and where the hay rake would stop.   So I decided I would rake all the rows.

I got 60% of the rows raked.  Tomorrow I will rake the rest of the rows before I begin my hay baling.  Hopefully tomorrow will go better.