Finished second hay cutting, and more

On my second day of hay cutting, Monday, I finished cutting the hay in the hayfield.  I finished at 6 pm.   I then got the idea of cutting some of the grass in the pastures.  Wait. What?  Aren't the cattle eating the grass in the pastures?   Yes.  But what I wanted to cut was the tall grass.  Grass that is drying out and going brown and is stem-y and tough.  And grass tall enough that if it falls against a sprinkler can cause the sprinkler's clapper to stop working and turning the sprinkler.

Between all our Spring rain, and the cattle spending one to two weeks in my neighbor's Ruth's field, the grass in the south and middle pastures took off as the cattle wasn't in them early to eat the grass down.  Cattle prefer young, moist and tender grass to eat, not tall tough grass that is hard to eat.  They tend to avoid eating this type of grass.   I decided to set the haybine higher off the ground to cut the tall grass and leave the lower grass alone.  The cut grass will re-grow and be softer.  If the cattle want, they can eat the cut grass.  I've never had to cut the grass in the pastures before.

I have two sprinkler lines in the south pasture.  The active one, and the third line I use when I am moving one of the other irrigation lines.  I only cut the grass up to the active line, or half the field.  I removed a couple of pipes on the third line so I had room to drive around the irrigation line on each end.

It took longer than I expected and I didn't finish cutting the south pasture until almost 9 pm. Now that the pasture was cut down some I let the cattle come into the pasture.  If they wanted to eat some of the cut grass, fine.   The first thing the cattle did was run over to the tree that had broken off and fell to the ground a few days ago.  They surrounded the tree and looked to be eating the needles.  Really?  That's what you want to eat?

It was getting late to move irrigation lines.  I decided to only move the line that goes in the middle and north pastures as that line is a few valves behind the south pasture line.  First I had to move the pipes back into the third line so I could use it.   I also had to place the valve opener back on the valve.  That can be trickier when it is the last thing to do, not the first.  I was having trouble getting the valve opener back on the valve.  Then I got stung.  Then stung again.  I discovered a black wasp next was nearby.   I tried a few times to get the valve opener back on and got stung again.  And again.   I had to go home and get a can of wasp spray. The wasp spray slowed the wasps down and kept them away from me and I was able to get the valve opener back onto the valve.

It was getting dark quickly now.  No moon was out.   My line movement went slow.  Each time I moved a pipe I had to look for the line of pipes to get a pipe, then look for the line of pipes where I was putting the pipe.  After I moved all the pipes I walked back to the valve opener.  It was so dark I walked into the barb wire fence that separates the north and middle pastures.  Ouch.   After opening the valve I had to trust I moved the pipes correctly and the sprinklers were straight and not at an angle.  I couldn't see them.

Tuesday afternoon I decided to cut down some the tall grass in the middle and north pastures.  Again only to the irrigation line.  Two-thirds in the middle pasture.   In the north pasture I only cut the tall and dead grass in a third of the pasture.  The rest of the pasture was fine.  I didn't get done cutting until 8 pm.  I was able to move the irrigation line by 9:30 pm.  It was getting dark but wasn't dark.  So the line move went well.

Photos from the middle pasture.

Sprinkler line ahead.