Cutting Donna's hayfield

I have spent the past three days cutting Donna's hayfield.  Usually it should take me only a day to cut her field, but this year she also fertilized the newer sections of her hayfield and the grass grew tall and thick.  Donna is waiting her daughter and son-in-law to help her bale her field so that is why she waited until now for me to cut her field, and not earlier.   So her grass grew taller than my grass.

Since Donna no longer has horses, a few years ago she replanted much of the horses' area.  That was fertilized.  A number of years earlier she replanted an area next to the horses' former area.  That was fertilized.  Then last year she replanted a small section of the rest of her field.  That was fertilized.   The rest of the field is old grass that doesn't grow tall.  That was not fertilized.   Much of this shorter grass is hard for my haybine to cut.  That is because the grass is short enough to just want to lay on my haybine's bed, and not easily reach the back end opening or the roller to be pulled through.  That interferes with the cutting teeth/blades and makes it harder to easily cut the rest of the shorter grass.  I had to stop often to clean the grass off the bed.  Last year I only cut a small section of this area as it got too annoying to cut and would leave uncut grass standing.  So two years of this grass made it a little easier to cut this year, but it still was a pain.

And some areas of Donna's two newer replanted area had some "angel hair' like grass.  It is not really 'angel hair' grass as it is not featherily, but it is the best I can describe the grass as it is very thin.  Very thin grass, but dense.   The haybine would cut it, but it was hard to move it across and off my haybine's bed by the haybine's flywheel.  Often I would have to manually remove this 'angel hair' grass when it built up too much on the haybine's bed.

Also causing problems were the many pocket gopher mounds in Donna's field.  The dirt would end up on the haybine's bed, and after a while would make it harder for the cutting teeth/blades to cut the grass, and the dirt would have to be cleaned off the bed.

So it should have been a two day job this year.  Oh.. but wait.  On the second day, after Donna and I replaced a broken haybine tooth and before I could start cutting that day, it began to rain.   Rain was not in the forecast at all.   But it rained.  So instead of starting to cut at 1 pm, I didn't start cutting until 6 pm, after the grass had dried.  And I could only cut until a little after 9 pm when the dew began to form on the grass.

This afternoon I finished the cutting.   Afterwards I used Donna's pressure washer to clean off the haybine and tractor.

So I am done with Donna's field.  Donna's daughter and son-in-law are planning to come and help Donna bale the hay this week.  They want small hay bales and Donna has an old-fashioned baler that makes small bales. They will also collect the bales and haul them back to their place to feed their horses.  We'll see how this goes as now there is rain in the forecast on Monday.  Ugh.

To the right is the horses' former pasture.  To the left is the replanted area next to the horses' pasture.

Donna has different grass than I have.  Her grass seeded out but was not full of pollen like my grass was.  So I didn't have any pollen allergies or attacks from her grass.

Still cutting the area next to the horses' former pasture.  The grass was very tall.

Here is a photo of the shorter grass section of Donna's hayfield.

Here are two photos of Donna's neighbor's field.  I think he planted canola.