Apple tree. Walnut tree.

Here is a photo of the apple tree out in the pasture.  This is the tree that a nearby tree fell on last year breaking off half the apple tree.  As you can see the remainder of the tree is doing well.

Here are a couple of photos of my larger walnut tree.  It didn't leaf out until late this year.  June I think. I was starting to wonder if the tree had made it through the Winter.  It did.   But I don't see any walnuts on it this year.  Do walnut trees take a year off producing walnuts?  Or did this very late start this Spring didn't give the walnuts a chance this year?   Unlike fruit trees, I never saw blossoms on the walnut tree any year.

Hay tarp and fence boards added

Here is a photo of the tarp I used to cover my hay bales.

I added boards to the other side of my north/middle pasture gate.  I had thought the barb wires would be enough to make a fence, but after I added boards to the other side of the gate, Toby now would stick his head through the fence wires on this side of the gate in order to reach and check the cows standing on the other side right next to the fence. 

One time when he was really bulging through I yelled at him to "knock it off and get back!".  When he did, a few staple nails holding the wire to the fence post popped off.  So.. time to added some boards.

I don't know why, but the middle board makes me think of a guitar.  I might start calling this gate, the "guitar gate".   The middle board is one I got from my neighbor Curtis when he was sawing a log using his sawmill.  I decided to add a couple more small boards to complete the fence.

I also had to straighten the two fence posts.  Between the tight fence wires naturally pulling the two ends posts sideways over the years, Toby's stretching through the wire caused more tension and sideways slant to the posts.

More of Diamond's baby calf photos and video

Yesterday I had a photo of the youngest baby calf.   Here are some photos and video from earlier this week of the calf.  He was in the correct pasture and was near an older calf.  But when I got closer he ran off.  That unnerved his aunt and his mother and they came running over to check on the calf.

Here is a 36 second video of the calf and his mother and auntie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqzSvCAqhRs

Toby

Apples, branches, Toby and a wheelbarrow

Back to a mixture of doing things.

I worked at picking apples off the ground for me and several neighbors.  From Ruth's granddaughter's trees I got several buckets of apples.  From Rusty's trees I got four buckets of apples.  I don't feed the apples all at once to the cattle as that many apples may not be good for them.  But I did give the cattle several buckets of apples.

The other day when I parked my baler under the box elder trees by the pole shed, I stepped up on my baler's wheel to look up on top of the baler to see if a tree branch was above or rubbing on top of the baler.  As I stepped up to look at the branch I didn't notice another thick branch and whacked the top of my head scratching the skin.  This hurt and made me very unhappy.  The branch above the baler wasn't touching the baler.  But today I decided to trim a few other branches nearby. I had noticed a few other branches were now right against my toolshed roof.

I loaded the branches in my wheelbarrow and planned to haul them out to the pasture.  Toby decided he wanted to check them out and stopped me from pushing the wheelbarrow.  I quit and let him be.  No sense arguing with a bull.  Toby and the cows like eating box elder tree leaves.

Here is a 1 minute 11 second video of Toby and the branches and the wheelbarrow: https://youtu.be/RPL1q3IlKiE

Later, after the cows and Toby left, I put the branches back into the wheelbarrow and hauled them off.

I decided to check on the willow trees and beaver action.  My latest fence fix seems to have worked,  My previous fence fix... I 'm not sure.  I saw part of the top of that fence was bent down a bit.  Whether the beaver got over, I'm not sure.

Here is another willow tree.  You can see the fence wire around the tree has worked.  Still, the beaver reached up and gnawed off a side branch.

I accidently took another picture in the area.  I like the photo so I kept it.  The photo shows some willow trees the beavers didn't get to, and a tall fence wire I had put up to stop the cattle from reaching over to eat the willow trees.

On the way back to the house I saw Diamond was along the fence mooing.  What's up Diamond?   Oh, your calf got into the middle pasture and you are calling her back and she is not listening to you as the calf wants to check out the other cattle.  I had to go to the middle pasture and try to herd the calf back to the north pasture.  The calf is really leery of me and would run away.  I tried to herd the calf down the fence line to the gate.  But, around and around.  Finally the calf ran to the fence and slipped through the three fence wires and back into the north pasture and her mother.

I put a tarp over my hay bales outside of the hayshed. I also put a few temporary corral panels around the bales. Later I will put a few metal posts in the ground so the cattle won't push the corral panels around in order to reach the hay bales.

It is raining tonight.

Hay bales put away

Today I moved the hay bales from the field over to the hayshed.  "Near" is an appropriate word as only 9 bales fit in the hayshed before I ran out of room inside.

Tomorrow I will put temporary corral panel around the bales to protect them once I let the cattle into this pasture later.  I also got a large tarp out and will install it later.  The tarp will better protect the bales from the rain and snow.  Rain is in the forecast starting Friday night.

The hayfield is now clear.  You can also see where the windrows were located.

Since the day I had trouble starting the tractor last week, the tractor always started each day.  Today after I started the tractor, it ran for a real short time, then quit.  Then it didn't want to start.  Oh, no. Not again!  Why?!   I tried starting the tractor four or five times before it started.   It then ran fine.  Later it would always quickly restart after I had to turn the tractor off to do something.

With the haying all done for the year I can now turn my attention to other projects, and get some fence rebuilding done.

Haynes jailbreak and baler cleaning

This afternoon while I was cleaning my baler a neighbor stopped by to tell me that one of my black cattle was in Wyatt's field, near my fence.  I went to look and found Haynes in Wyatt's field.

The rest of the cattle were in my south pasture.  It was a bit tricky but I was able to open the gate a little way and herd Haynes to and through the gate before the other cattle attempted to go through the gate.

Now how did Haynes escape?  I have not had cattle get out of the south pasture to Wyatt's field ever since I rebuilt that fence back in 2014.  Starting from my south pasture fence I even built/rebuilt the fence that was on Wyatt's property along the river bend.  "Built/rebuilt" is because the fence on Wyatt's property was barely there anymore.  They haven't had cattle longer than I've been here and they let the fence go.

I walked along the south pasture fence.  All good.  I checked the fence I had built back in 2014 on Wyatt's property.    Hmmm... this looks like Haynes may have gotten through the fence at this point.  No where else looked like it was Haynes jailbreak escape point.  I went and got some more wire and nails and added it to this fence section, and a few other fence sections along this fence that looked like they could become a future escape point.

 

Back to cleaning the baler.  Since on Tuesday I had removed most of the hay and stuff from the baler, and Wednesday all I had to do was use the air compressor to blow the rest of the hay debris out of the baler, I didn't think it would take long.  Wrong.  Hay debris was here and there and everywhere from top to bottom.  And sometimes when I would blow the hay debris from one area it would float and some land on an area I had already cleaned.

But it's done.  The baler is very clean.  Tomorrow I will park the baler then move the bales from the hayfield to the hayshed.

Hay baling done

Tuesday afternoon I finished baling my hay.  Hurray!  I'm happy to have my yearly necessary chore to be done.   No tractor problems.  Baling went well.  

The last bale had part of the net-wrap snag on the baler as the bale unloaded.   Two bales out of 27 bales where this happened.  So not bad.  

The last bit of hay made a third of a bale.  I caused the bale to be net-wrapped.  But when I unloaded the bale the net-wrap snagged on parts of the baler.

I believe for my second hay cut I had made 26 and 1/3 bales last year.  This year I made 27 and 1/3 bales.  So about the same.

Now to finish cleaning the baler tomorrow and then haul and stack the bales.  Then I will be done and can get onto other projects.

Beaver work again

In my previous post I had mentioned I was in the north pasture and saw the gate open.  Why I was in the north pasture was that I decide to walk to the river and check on my recent work to protect the willow trees from the beavers.  My work seemed to have worked.  Those willow trees were not eaten anymore.

Then down the way a little bit I noticed something...   I walked over and found the beaver had pushed through my fence protection on another willow tree and had eaten a bunch of it.  Argh!!!!   

The next two photos shows where the beavers had pushed the fencing.  And you can see bare ground where they had also dug to get through the fencing.  Not seen in the photos, I could see the path which the beaver has made through the tall grass when it went back and forth to the river with parts of the willow tree.  I could see some of the willow branches in the water nearby along the bank and in among some other river wood debris.  I wonder if the beaver lives nearby, or if they didn't care about these small branches and let them float away.  I'll have to watch and see if these branches disappear over the next few days.  I'm also going to try to find someone who wants to trap beavers.

The beaver chewed and chewed on the willow tree.

My repair job.  I added a few more posts.  I also added some wire to bind the fence sections together.  Now to see if this keeps the beaver away from this tree.  I also seen some other willow trees where the beaver tried to get through the fencing but couldn't.  Even though the beaver did chew a few small side branches they could just reach.

Cattle into and out of Ruth's field

No baling of my hay today.  This afternoon I checked a few of the windrows and found in a few spots where the windrow was thicker and the hay underneath was still green and a little damp.  Not bad.  I could have baled the hay if I had to, but since the weather is nice, I can wait one more day for the hay to dry more before baling it.

So what did I do on Labor Day?  Saturday, after Donna baled some of my hay, and before I had started to put the bales into my barn, I had let the cattle in the south and middle pastures into Ruth's field to my south.  

Here is a 1 minute 1 second video of the cattle heading into Ruth's field.  https://youtu.be/DWA0Gyvp8Mo

There was a little grass to eat in her field.  Ruth's apple trees have dropped lots of apples into her backyard.  Instead of getting buckets to haul the apples home for the cattle, after I let my cattle into Ruth's field I tossed the apples over the fence into her pasture.  That was easier.

This morning I saw cow #8 briefly fight with Haynes, the bull.  Head to head #8 was pushing Hayes backwards. Haynes must have annoyed #8 earlier.  I think hanging around the cows is starting to make Haynes a little more interested and "active".

After two days, the grass was eaten down well, and this afternoon after getting more apples down the road from Ruth's granddaughter's trees and feeding two large plastic sacks of apples to the cattle, I let the cattle back into my pastures. 

As I walked home the cattle decided to follow me, then go into the middle pasture.  Toby, who for two days has been walking along the north/middle pasture fence and looking over to and calling out often to the cattle in Ruth's field, was happy when the cattle came near the north /middle pasture fence.

In the evening I was in the north pasture and saw the north/middle gate open.  What?!   Donna thinks I overdo locking the gate when I run the chain through the eye hook twice.  It can be a pain to unhook and open my gates locked that way.  Well... the calves love to play with the chain.  Usually double hooking the chain works.  Not this time.  

The calves got the chain out of the catch area on the gate.  Then they pulled the chain and got one strand out of the eye hook.  Then they pulled on the chain another way and pulled it out of the small hole in the gate catch area.  Now I am not sure if the calves then pulled the chain completely out of the eye hook, or if the very windy day pushed on the gate enough that the long chain slowly slipped out of the eye hook and the gate opened partway.  Why I am not sure is that I expected the cattle to be here and there in the wrong pasture.  Especially Toby.  But everyone was in their correct pasture.  No one was near the gate when it opened(?) and didn't realize it became open.

I quickly closed the gate and gain double chain locked it again.

I also noticed the west fence section next to the gate had bent and stretched wire making an open area in the fence.  Toby will put his head and neck through this area of the fence so he can sniff the cows on the other side of the fence.  He had done this on the east section of fence next to the gate - until I put those boards on that section and put a stop to that behavior.  Tonight I re-straightened the stretched and bent wires on this fence section. Tomorrow I will place a board or two on this section of fence.  Toby... Toby... Toby...

More hay baling

 A good day of hay baling.  First I had planned to rake more hay windrows, two rows into one.  But it got very windy in the afternoon and would blow some of the raked hay.  So two rows became one and a half rows at times.  So I quit raking and started to bale.

This time I remembered that before the first bale, since the baler sat for a while since my first hay cut in July, I should make the rollers for the netwrap to move slightly before I started to make my first bale.  Otherwise it seems as if the netwrap stays on the roller and does not wrap around the bale.  It worked.  The first bale was netwrapped correctly.  Otherwise I only had one bale where a small part of the netwrap on one side would catch on the baler when the bale unloaded.

The baling went well and I was able to bale all the rows I had raked, and a small number of rows I hadn't raked.  I baled all the rows I cut on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  As I approached Thursday rows I found the hay underneath the thicker windrows at times were not completely dry.  Since I couldn't bale everything today anyway, I called it quits.  I'll see if the hay is dry enough to bale tomorrow, or if I needed to wait one more day.  Fortunately there is no rain in the forecast this week.

I made 21 hay bales today.

Videos of Donna's small baler in action

Here are some videos of Donna's small baler making bales today.  And you can hear, the baler is loud.  That is why Donna is wearing ear protection.

First video shows a bad bale coming off the baler.  9 seconds long.  https://youtu.be/St6yv_Q20jQ

A view of Donna baling while I watched the knotters.  48 seconds long.  https://youtu.be/NDNuaXjT8gU

A closer video of the baler's knotters working.  1 minute 7 seconds long.  https://youtu.be/wunKZPETNdY

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.

Hayfield is cut, and dull teeth

I got my hayfield cut this afternoon.  Everything went well.   The tractor started no problem. I still have no clue why the tractor was difficult to start yesterday.   I figured I had two to three hours left of cutting if things went well.  It took me exactly two hours.  It is nice when things go to plan.

After cutting the field I used an air compressor to blow off all the grass and debris from the haybine and cleaned it up.  That took an hour as I really cleaned the haybine inside and out.   I then looked at the haybine's teeth.  One tooth had a broken tip so I replaced it.   While the hayfield was all cut very cleanly I still looked at the rest of the haybine's teeth.  I noticed some - 10 to 12 - teeth looked like they were started to get dull.  While, again, all the grass and alfalfa was cut well, I decided to replace the teeth that were starting to loose their ridges and look dull.

I had to make sure the teeth I was removing were aligned between the rock guards in order to take them off.

In the following photo the second tooth from the right side was dull.  I don't know why, but the right side of the sickle bar had an extra metal bar on top of the rightmost teeth.  I finally got the dull tooth off, but it took a lot of effort to get the upper metal bar up high enough and then the dull tooth off.

I didn't want to take the entire sickle bar off the haybine even though it would have made removing all the dull teeth easier.  In addition to the section with the extra metal bar, some areas had an extra metal tooth / sickle bar protector and that was more work to remove.  You can partially see what I am talking about in the previous photos on the right side.   In the following photo I already took it off.  It was on the left side.  The larger nuts had bolted it on.

Getting a good metal tooth back on the second to the right was a pain.  A nut had slipped underneath the tooth.  The photos make it look easy to access.  Um.. no.  The wheel that turns and knocked the grass down and towards the teeth  is just above the photos and I had to duck down to access the teeth trying to avoid banging my head or getting poked in the face by the wheel's tines.  And to find the nut under the metal tooth I had to lay my head on the ground to see under the tooth.

This section with the extra metal bar and all the nuts... I lost a nut.  Even using a magnet I couldn't find the nut. Once again something drops into the grass, and if I don't immediately look for it, it disappears. I don't know - it goes back to the alternative universe I was born in before coming to this universe after my head injury?    I had to go get another nut from elsewhere.  

It took me several hours to replace the dull teeth, and make a couple of bolt replacements. 

Other than re-greasing a few areas, my haybine should be ready for next year.

After I put the haybine away I hooked up my rake.  The rows I had cut on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are ready to bale and I raked 2 rows into one; in total 14 rows into 7.  Tomorrow the baling starts.

Also, I counted the number of rows I cut.  Earlier I thought - for some reason - I may have 26 or 27 rows.  Actually the total is 40 rows.

Another hay cutting problem

I thought I would be done cutting hay today.  But no, I had another problem.  Right after my tractor started today it quit.  Then I couldn't restart the tractor.  The tractor acted like it wasn't getting fuel.   Earlier I had filled the fuel tank completely full.  I checked and used the tractor's fuel priming pump.  Yes, the tractor had fuel.  I went over and talked to the repairman who fixed my tractor to get ideas.  Perhaps something wasn't completely connected?  He suggested a couple things for me to look at.  I did and they were fine.  The repair shop was completely busy on other projects for the rest of the week and couldn't take time to look at my tractor.  I talked with my neighbor Curtis for other ideas.   None available.

Great.  I'm not going to get my hay cutting done.  I waited a few hours.  Before putting a battery charger on the tractor, as my earlier start attempts was beginning to slow the battery, I tried starting the tractor again.  This time the tractor seemed like it wanted to start, so I kept it up.  And the tractor then started.

Once the tractor started it ran fine.  So I went to cut more hay.  By now it was after 5 pm.  I had three hours before dark and the dew came.  So I cut non-stop. I didn't get everything cut.  If my tractor had started when I first tried to start it, I would have got everything cut.   The last 10 minutes of cutting was slower.  I wanted to get to a corner before quitting and the going was slower and slower.  The dew was the reason.  When I had finished I checked the grass and it was very wet from dew.

What will tomorrow bring?  Will my tractor start?   I'll see tomorrow.

Hay cutting and Toby

I didn't get all my hay cut today.  I got sidetracked.  It was dewy this morning so I couldn't start cutting hay earlier.  I made a minor repair on the haybine.  Still early and dewy so I went and talked with my neighbor Curtis and told him about my tractor.  That wasn't a long conversation.  Then since it was still dewy I went to tell my neighbor "Larry" thanks as he was the one who suggested my tractor problem could be because of debris in the tank.  Larry wasn't home but his mother was.  Mother/son... we are probably talking ages of 80 and 60 years old.  I ended up talking with the mother for much longer than I realized.

When I got home I had an earlier phone message from my neighbor to the north.  Toby was over there.  I went and looked for Toby.  He wasn't there.  The neighbor didn't know where Toby went.  The neighbor doesn't close his gates.  I went looking.  Where is Toby?  He wasn't at the neighbors.  I finally found Toby in my hayfield.  He walked through the neighbors properties.  Walked to the road?  Then walked down to my driveway and came back home.  I had the gate open between the hayfield and backyard as earlier I had been working the haybine and I planned on buying more diesel for the tractor.  So I quickly herded Toby in the north pasture.  I plan to sell Toby at the livestock later this month so this wandering will end.

I bought diesel and then finally got to cutting hay.  Naturally I didn't get all my field cut.  Tomorrow I should finish.  Unless I get distracted.