Box elder bugs

No rain this afternoon.  The box elder bugs came out on the toolshed walls to take in the sun.  A female box elder tree next to the toolshed is why the box elder bugs hang out there.  You can see the leaves in the background for the female tree. Places away from a female box elder tree hardly have any box elder bugs.

Since the box elder bugs are all red, they must be young.  Mature box elder bugs are black and red.

Baby robins

The baby robins are leaving their nests these days.  A few days ago I saw one hopping on the ground just outside the house.  This afternoon, since we had a break from our rain over the past few days, I saw another robin near the well pump house.  This time I got my camera.  Every time I tried to get close enough for a photo the robin would do a short fly away.  I gave up and took this photo.   I made sure that Rascal, who was also outside, didn't see the bird.

Columbia ground squirrel

They're back.  Today I caught a Columbia ground squirrel.  Or as we used to call the in the Midwest, prairie dogs. Out here in Montana I've seen gophers that looked like prairie dogs, and similar looking gophers but with different fur coloring: Colombia ground squirrels.  I use to have them in my middle pasture.  From 2006 to 2010 I trapped 226 of them.  The last two I trapped were in 2010.  None since then, until now.

The closest I've seen Columbia ground squirrels to my ranch is a mile away in the ditch along the highway next to another field.   In between that spot and my ranch are mostly houses and yards.  Not where Columbia ground squirrels would move and create a maze of tunnels.   When riding my bicycle I kept an eye out to see if any were moving closer.  No signs of them.  But one squirrel (or more?) now traveled some distance to my place. 

Several days ago, after I removed the hay bales from the hayfield, I went out and set my pocket gopher traps.  In the hayfield next to the road, and near the gate to the road, I found open holes in the ground.  Pocket gophers make mounds of dirt but do not have open holes in the ground.  How pocket gophers get air underground is a mystery to me.  A number of new open holes in the ground got me thinking of Columbia ground squirrels.  So I got out my traps for them which are different than pocket gopher traps. 

I have 14 traps.  Conibear and leghold traps.  I found 15 holes.  One hole I filled in with dirt and put the rest of the traps on the other holes.  In the past I learned to put the traps over all the holes I could.  Otherwise the gophers reopen the holes and avoid the traps.

The next day I found a new hole near the other holes.  One leghold trap was closed.  Because of a ground squirrel or something else?  I filled the hole back in and reset the leghold trap in the other hole.  This morning I found another one of the leghold traps was not in sight.  The traps are usually chained to a metal pole I stick in the ground.  This trap was chained to a wooden board.  The board was there but had been moved.  I couldn't pull the trap out of the hole.  Must be a Columbia ground squirrel.

I got a shovel and dug around making the hole larger and deeper.  I finally pulled the ground squirrel out as it fought to stay underground.  I then quickly killed it.  I hated doing it, but it had to be done.

I left all the traps in place.  Is it just one Columbia ground squirrel, or did a pair of them move to my hayfield?  Time will tell.

Leghold trap.   Old photo of a placed conibear trap.

Traps all set several days ago.  I had run out of milk jugs to place on the poles to mark the spot the traps were located.

This trap had the chain attached to a wooden board.  The gopher didn't get the board pulled down the hole.  The second photo shows how I dug the hole larger so I could pull the gopher out.

Cattle into neighbor's field

Today I let the cattle into a neighbor's field.  They would like their grass eaten down.  I'm fine with that.  Especially since the cattle had been standing in the corner of the middle pasture and mooing at me across the fence to let them into the south pasture when I started to lay out my irrigation pipes.  The irrigation pipes are stored in the south pasture, and having the cattle in that pasture while I move the pipes from the south pasture out to the hayfield would be a pain.  Now I can lay out the irrigation pipes tomorrow in peace.

Hay stacked. Harrowing done.

Today I finished stacking my hay bales.  I had to move last year's hay bales out of the hayshed, then gather and stack this year's hay bales, then re-stack last year's hay bales back into the hayshed.   As I never use all the hay bales in a year, this way last year's hay bales are first to get eaten this Winter.

Last year's hay bales at the end.  It would appear my second hay cutting this year may have the hayshed filled and a few hay bales just out the hayshed.  We'll see.

Once the hay was stacked, I got the harrow out, raked the extended corral, and re-raked the corral.  Then parked the harrow.  Another day I will take the harrow sections apart and lean them against the hayshed until next Spring.

Around and around I went in the extended corral to smooth it out.  When the ground was wet and muddy this Spring the cattle's weight moved some of the ground into "hills" which then stayed when the ground dried.  The "hills" were kind of a moat-area around where the cattle stood around the feeder.

The extended corral area is now level.

The main corral on the left.  On the ride side is the corral where the bull and his feeder were located.  Not as much to rake in there, just the location where the feeder had been.

Rain

Good thing I got all my hay baled yesterday.  It rained this morning, and again this evening.  Heavy rain for us.  We got .49 inch of rain.  The ground is still damp.  The unbaled hay would have been a mess from this rain.

Hay baled

I got all my hay baled today.  Just in time as it was 9:20 pm when I was done.  It would have been nice if the hay rake didn't break yesterday.  I would have gotten all the hay raked yesterday, the tractor re-fueled, and the tractor hooked up to the bale yesterday.  Since I didn't get that done yesterday, I had to do it today.  I didn't start baling the hay until 3 pm.

A little over six hours to bale the hay.  Not bad.  None of my usual baler mishaps happened so that helped.  I had only one instance where the bale wouldn't stop wrapping a bale.  That was when the netwrap roll finished.  Whether that was the problem that netwrap wouldn't stop, or the not-stopping is what caused the netwrap roll to finish is unknown.  That bale did have more than the usual amount of netwrap.   I got the new roll of netwrap loaded and the baler's actuator adjusted, and everything was fine after that.

My only other annoyance is that occasionally one side of the netwrap would get caught in the baler and not around the bale. This happened four or five times but the bales are good and don't have to be re-done.

Examples of this:

I made 59 bales. Which is decent.  I fertilized the hayfield this year so I expected more bales.  On the other hand I cut the field almost three weeks earlier than usual.  The longer time in the past would have meant more hay in the first cutting.

Tomorrow I will clean the baler and park it.  The hay dried quicker than expected so I won't have to wait as long before I stack the bales in the hayshed.  A few days from now.

Once the bales are stacked I will lay out the irrigation lines and start irrigating.  A few rain drops when I turned the tractor off, but no real rain yet.  A half hour before I finished baling I saw dark rain clouds and a lightning bolt in the north end of the valley.  But it didn't come my way.   Rain is forecast for after midnight, but now that my hay is baled the rain probably won't come.

Hay rake broke

Every year the past so many years I had equipment problems during hay season.  One year a tractor problem.  Then a swather problem the next year.  New tractor, new swather last year.  So last year one of the rollers on the hay baler broke.  This year, the hay rake broke.

The baler and hay rake are not that old.  I got 90% around the first row in the hayfield when the rake quit today.   The "basket" that rotates and moves the hay did not turn when I pulled the hay rake.  By hand I could rotate the "basket".  So maybe the problem was in the "gear box".

The "gear box".   The lever on top of the gear box in one position engages the movement of the "basket".  The other position of the lever disengages the "basket's" movement.  The lever seemed to be ok.  Still, I opened the gear box to see inside.  Lots of grease.  And the grease slowly would ooze out.   What a mess.    I thought maybe the cogs the lever engages had worn out.  No, they seemed ok.

Taking the gear box apart and then putting it back together was a major pain.  The bar (sticking out of the gear box end) has to fit just right against the cogs and lever.  The grease oozing made the heavy bar and gear box end plate slippery.  Everything got messy.  And the grease was some special grease.  It was very hard to clean off my hands and arms.  Neither soap nor a "goo" grease cleaner cleaned me.  I had to pour gasoline on my hands and arms and wash several times to get clean.   My clothes are a mess.

Before and during.

Then what could the problem be?  I miss my neighbor Curtis who died last December.   He would have given me advice on what to do next.  No Curtis, so I looked online on YouTube for a video on how to fix the rake.  Only a couple of wheel driven hay rake videos on YouTube and they weren't helpful.

I went and tested the bar that connected the two wheels to the "gear box".  With a pipe wrench I could turn the bar.  Okay.  Why don't the wheels turn the bar?

I jacked the wheels off the ground as driving the tractor to pull the hay rake wasn't helpful.  Turning the wheels didn't turn the bar.   The problem must be the wheels.  I took the wheels off.   This was a pain to do for the wheel closest to the "gear box."   I had to partially disconnect the bar to get that wheel off.

Still no clue as to what the problem was.  With Curtis around the answer would be quick.  But I was very frustrated right now and not thinking clearly.   By now I wasted the afternoon on this problem.  It was now 4:30 pm and the John Deere dealership closed at 5:30 pm.  I took the round object in the previous photo to the dealership.  I wanted to take more parts but they would be very, very difficult to take off the rake.  So I took photos of the rake with my camera.

Across town I drove in heavy traffic.  I wanted to talk with Jack as he always knew the answer on these oddball and old type of equipment.  I could not find Jack.  Other repair people had no idea when I asked them about the rake, or where Jack was.  I talked with an equipment manager and he said Jack was sent out to customer site for a repair.  The manager had to leave in a couple of minutes but he said he would let Jack know to call me when he got back.

I drove home.  And I thought some more.  I got an idea.  I looked some more at the rake and it seemed I now knew what was the problem, and came up with a solution.  I waited to hear from Jack.  From my description he said he thought that was the problem and solution also.

The problem was this lever on each wheel.   The spring pushes the lever end out and the lever end catches in the ridges in the round object I drew a red arrow to in an earlier photo.  The levers in both wheels froze up and the spring could no longer push the lever end out so that the lever end would catch in the ridges.   The wheel would turn but lever end not catching meant this round object would not turn when the wheel turned.  The round object not turning meant the bar would not turn.  The bar not turning meant the connection in the "gear box" did not turn.  That connection not turning meant the "basket" did not turn.  The "basket" turning is what rakes the hay.

So I worked at moving and loosening the lever.  I oiled the lever.  I hammered the lever back and forth and eventually the lever would move due to the spring action.  This wheel done.

The next wheel lever was much more fixed in place.  I think this lever may have failed sometime in the past and only one wheel caused the bar and basket to move until today.  On this second wheel I had to pound the lever out of the metal ring.  I used a file to smooth the lever rod and the metal ring and now this lever moves easily by spring action.

Then I had to put everything back together and clean as much of the grease as I could off of external stuff.  More gasoline and rags were used. 

At 7:21 pm I finally got out to rake my hayfield.   If the rake had worked from the get-go I would have been done raking by mid-afternoon.  Instead, with a late start I got only three-fourths of the field raked by dark.  Tomorrow I will finish the raking and then start baling the hay.   Raking is good as around 10% of the hay is still green and wet due to cutting.  Maybe tomorrow - if I didn't rake - the hay would be ready to bale.  With the hay raked, it should be all good tomorrow for baling.   And raking two rows into one row should make the baling be faster.   I want to get the baling done tomorrow as rain and thunderstorms are in the forecast tomorrow night and Thursday.

Hayfield first cut

Yesterday and today I cut my hayfield.  The earliest ever for me, but the grass was high. Time to cut.  Saturday noon I saw an animal walking in the hayfield.  I saw the ears, top of the head, and sometimes its back. What animal was this?  It was a deer, not a dog.

I saw other people had cut their hay.  Usually they cut early as they want three hay cutting in a year.

The weather forecast looks good for hay cutting and drying.  Warm to hot temperatures and mostly dry.  Of course, after I cut my hay the forecast now has a rain chance later this week.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem as I normally can bale in four days after the hay is cut.  But in the areas I had seen hay cut on Sunday and Monday - or was it Monday and Tuesday? - and saw they had raked the hay on Thursday; on early Saturday afternoon their hay was not baled.  The hay was drying, but didn't seem quite ready to bale.  Hay is drying longer this week.  I hope my hay dries quicker.

I had to fill diesel in my tractor.  Almost 40 gallons so I wanted to drive my tractor to the gas station.  Better to do that on a weekend instead of a weekday as there would be less traffic.  And there was.

I filled my tractor yesterday afternoon and got to work to hook up the mower conditioner.  The cattle had eaten most of the grass in the NE pasture and fruit tree area and time to let them out to the north pasture.  I wanted to wait to do that after I got the tractor and mower conditioner into the hayfield as that would mean less gate watching as I drove through.  Slowing me down was after I got the tractor ready the cattle decided to take a siesta next the gate to the north pasture where I would drive my tractor through.  I waited an hour and then the cattle went back to the fruit tree area and I was able to drive through the gate.  When I finished cutting on Saturday I then let the cattle into the north pasture.  They were happy.

It was late so I only got 7 rows cut Saturday.  The first row was slow going as I wanted to cut near the fences but not into the fences.  The grass was so tall in many places that it was hard to see the mower conditioner as it moved near the fence.  So, slow going.  But no fence damage.

Also in the southern part of the hayfield kind-of close to the south pasture I saw two male deer in the tall grass.  They were growing nice antlers.  They kept staying in the grass each time I came around.  Today they were gone.  But as I cut today I saw quite a number of areas through the hayfield where deer had laid down flattening the grass.   The deer will have to find new areas to bed down now.

Saturday I drove at 2.2 mph.  Today I drove a 2.9 mph.  At times when the hay was not as high or thick I may have been able to drive a little faster, but I kept at the steady 2.9 mph speed.  I was making good time.  I remember the last time I cut my hayfield after fertilizing it.  That was when I had my old New Holland swather.  The swather struggled and I had to drive at the slowest speed and even take a few stops every now and then so the cut hay could get through the swather.  The mower conditioner - no problem.  Back when I fertilized and cut with the swather it took me almost three days to cut my hayfield.   This year, 8 hours over two days.  This is why I wanted to get a mower conditioner to replace the swather.

Today's cut was off to a sad start. When walking out to the tractor I found next to the hayfield gate, in the house yard, eggs in a nest.  It looks to be turkey eggs.  Several damaged, others not so.  The hole in the one egg was due to a magpie that flew off when I approached.  But no turkey.  Either my cat, or when the cows were in the yard eating grass they disturbed the turkey and she left.  I never had a turkey make a nest in the yard before.

Then when cutting the hay, when cutting my second row for the day, I saw on the first row a dead bird.  I think it may have been a hawk.  It wasn't a turkey.  And I don't think it was a pheasant.  Why the bird didn't leave the grass as my mower conditioner came, I don't know.   Then a few rows later on the east side of the field - the dead bird was on the west side - I looked back at the mower conditioner and saw a bird fly out of the grass just in front of the mower conditioner.  If the bird waited 10 seconds later it would have been dead.  The bird looked like the dead bird.  That is why I think it was a hawk.   Then for 5 or so go-arounds I would see the hawk standing on a windrow near where it had flown away.  Most likely it had a nest there.  So sad.

The power line towers are so annoying to cut around.

The field is cut.

Cattle now into fruit tree area

This afternoon I let the cattle into the fruit tree area to eat the grass there.  The NE pasture was fairly eaten down and the cows were starting to let me know they wanted to go elsewhere where there was more grass.

The fruit tree area before I let the cattle in.

Entering the fruit tree area.

In the NE pasture I had added extra fencing and chicken wire to protect the caragana trees, and a few other trees.  You can see the cattle pushed and moved some of the fencing and got to some of the caragana trees.

Here is a Scotch pine tree.  The cattle pushed up the fencing and reached and broke some of the smaller lower branches.

Lightning Picasso in heat

Around noon I seen Lightning Picasso was in heat and Fritz the bull was attentive.  Around and around they went.  Fritz tried to satisfy her but Lightning wasn't in the right spot or would move a bit.  Lightning wanted 'action' now and when Fritz took a rest before trying again Lightning would mount Fritz.

The action took place in the corral.   Lightning and Fritz are behind cow 31.

Fritz is standing in first photo behind Lightning.  Second photo shows Lightning getting impatient and then getting on Fritz.

Beulah who was watching came over to Lightning as she just rode Fritz.

Fritz is trying but Lightning is standing too close to the barn and Fritz can't right behind Lighnting.

Fritz took a break from the previous attempt; Lightning can't wait and then she got on Fritz again.

Now Fritz is back at it.

Here is a 15 second video of Lightning on top of Fritz for a bit.  https://youtu.be/5vC25lFNxZg

I checked an hour later and Lightning and Fritz were laying in the corral.  At different spots.  I think Fritz got the job done.  I never saw them together the rest of the day.

Cattle into NE pasture

After 8 pm tonight I let the cattle into the NE pasture.  The yard is mostly eaten down now.   The cattle were starting to go where they weren't suppose to in the yard.   They torn some of the chicken wire off the walnut tree and ate some leaves.  A little more leaves the cattle ate off the lilacs.  They tipped the fencing roll protecting the black walnut tree and ate some of its leaves.  They got through some fencing and ate half of the flowers.   And they tried to break off the electrical boxes for the pump to pump water into the water trough.  The electrical boxes are still partially attached to the railroad tie as the cattle didn't get them completely off.

Here are the cattle before I let them into the NE pasture.  Then them going into the NE pasture.

The gate I let the cattle through.

On the back of this cow a bird rode his back for a while.