First stump removed

I finally got the first tree stump of the year removed and covered.  Due to all the time spent last year removing tree stumps, I was trying to be better about removing tree stumps this year.    After last year's work I only had three stumps left to remove.   Then the cattle broke off two stumps.  So that made it five stumps.   Then when harrowing the middle pasture I found another stump trying to come out of the ground. That made it six stumps.

I started digging around the stumps earlier this Spring.  And I decided to try not to dig so far down around them.  I figured I would dig down deep enough so that what remained after I burnt them would not rise up out of the ground until I was dead many years from now.

The first three digs went well.  I decided not to dig around the fourth stump as it was soft from decay and maybe a fire on top of it would burn enough of it away.  The fifth stump.  That was a project.  It was big and hard.  I followed a side root and discovered another stump about five feet from the stump I knew about.  And this extra stump was big and hard.  Once I finished digging around them, I decided I was done digging around stumps this year, and the sixth stump would wait for another year to remove.

Now I needed to wait a little bit for the uncovered stumps to dry before trying to burn them.  Before the stumps dried our rains came.  And it rained.  And rained.  A lot.  Then I had to wait for the stumps to dry again.  Then I had to cut hay.  Etc., etc.

I mentioned earlier I let the cattle into the middle pasture where four stumps (three holes) were, and how the cattle were obsessed with rubbing their heads and bodies in the dirt.  So the cattle are now out of the two pastures with the stumps.  This time I decided when using a chainsaw to cut up some branches in a pile I would also trying cutting the tree stumps I had dug.  It kind of worked.  Two stumps I was able to cut off in the holes I had dug.    The other three stumps were hard to cut, and they also had more of a large tap root that wasn't worth cutting as it was hard wood, and one of the stumps had a really large tap root.  That stump may have been from a tamarack tree instead of the usual Spruce trees.

Anyway...  I am still working on burning one stump in another pasture, but today I also spent time filling the dirt back into one of the holes I had cut a stump out of last week.   You'd think this would be easy to do.  Nope.   The cattle had obsessed with rubbing the dirt pile I had created when digging around the stump.  They flattened the dirt pile.  The dirt pile was very wet when the cattle rubbed on it.    The remaining dirt was hardened by the cattle and drying out.  I had to use a shovel and dig the dirt shovel by shovel to loosen it up so I could then shovel the dirt back into the stump hole.  

I finally got it done.  I was doing this along the middle/south pasture fence.  While I was doing the shoveling the cattle were standing along the middle/north pasture fence mooing over and over at me to let them into the middle pasture.  I didn't.

This was the stump I found trying to rise out of the ground.  You can see it in the middle of the photo.

Ok.  Not so big or bad of a stump.   And this is the dirt pile the cattle later rubbed against and flattened.

After I chainsawed the stump.

All done.

All hay bales stacked

Today I got the rest of the hay bales into the hayshed... and beyond.  I have more hay that can fit into the hayshed.

Here are all the 91 hay bales I made this year.  They just fit inside the hayshed.

Here I added 8 bales of last year's hay bales.  Plus I got the half bale I made on top of the stack.   Barely.  I had to spear the bale really low to be able to reach and leave the bale on top of the stack.

After I took this photo, I got one more row of 6 bales to fit inside the hayshed.  105 and 1/2 bales fit in the hayshed.

A photo of the small bale.  You can see the mark on the bale from sitting on the ground for a week.

Here is an example of where a hay bale sat in the hayfield.  I am sure all hay bales have a mark on their bottom.

I got all of last year's hay bales stacked.  I have 121 and 1/2 bales so far.  Who know how much more will come from the second hay cutting.

You can see how driving from the hayfield to the corral across my backyard made a track.

Now on to other projects.

Getting hay bales into the hayshed

This afternoon I started hauling my hay bales into my hayshed.  I wanted to wait a few days after baling the hay to be cautious in case the bales still had some cooling down to do.  When I un-rolled the one bale I had to re-bale, I could feel a little warm in the hay.  Not enough heat to cause the bale to catch fire, but I didn't want to risk stacking the bales inside the hayshed.  Maybe the combined heat would catch fire.  I remember some time ago in the past ten years I saw smoke way off in the distance south side of Kalispell.  It turns out large square hay bales had recently been created.  Then immediately the bales were stacked.  The combined heat started the bales on fire.

And another reason to wait is I have been working at getting the south pasture ready for the cattle.  The grass there is very tall and I want the cattle in there as soon as possible to eat the grass down.

Before I hauled the new bales to the hayshed, I had to take out the remaining last year hay bales.  I had 29 bales left even though it seemed the like the cattle were eating non-stop this past Winter.

Usually I only stack the bales 2 high in the first row right next to the wall.  I don't want the bales to lean against the wall.  Some years ago I had to fix / straighten the wall due to the bales leaning against it.  This year, because I have so many bales (91 1/2 plus 29 equals 120 bales so far), I have a feeling all the bales won't fit into the hayshed.  And I haven't even done the second hay cutting yet.

Because the bales seemed solid and steady I stacked them 3 high at the first row along the wall to get more bales inside the hayshed.  Here you can see how gravity affects the bales.  I am working on the second row of bales and you can see how the first row of bales are starting to lean.  Leaning this way is better than leaning that way against the way.   Still it slowed me down as some bales wanted to fall to the ground this way and I had to re-stack a few bales that had fallen.

I have hauled in 47 bales so far.  I plan to haul the rest in tomorrow as long as I get the south pasture ready and can let the cattle in there.  Because the cattle are still in the north pasture, to haul the bales from the hayfield to the hayshed, I have to drive through the backyard and corral to do so.

Walnut trees

The walnut trees look good. The trees are really growing this year.  I got the cattle out of the yard the other day when they started to eat the leaves on the trees.

The larger walnut tree has plenty of walnuts starting to grow on it this year.  They are still smallish as I took this photo up close.

Here is a photo of a piece of grass in the yard. Somehow the cattle missed eating this stem of grass.  So it wasn't just my hayfield grass that was full or seeds and pollen.  Those are seeds or pollen on this stem of grass, not insects.  But looking at it, I can see why I had such an allergy from all of that in the hayfield when I has haying.

Cattle damaging stuff when in the yard

I am recovering.   Today I saw and fixed several items the cattle damaged when they were in the yard.

My guitar cat.

My bicycle ornament.

Now fixed.

I still have to fix the wind ornament of the cat bicycling.  Here is how the ornament looked before the cattle got to it.  It's in pieces now.

Cattle breakout and hay baling

Saturday was an eventful day.   First off my sleep was interrupted by my cat Rascal.   He doesn't like loud noises and doesn't like the fireworks.  So he did not go outside until around 2 am.  He would wake me up to go outside.  He would wake me up to come back inside.   Then wake me up to go back outside after eating.   15 minutes.  A half hour. An hour later.  After two hours of this I left the door open so he could go in and out whenever he wanted.

Rascal was with me at 6 am when I woke when I heard mooing.   It sounded close.  I looked out my window and saw a cow and calf in the hayfield by a hay bale.  What?!   I went outside to find the cattle all over.  In the hayfield.  In the corral.  In the front yard. In the NE pasture.  Because the cattle formerly were in the neighbor's field I left many gates open so I could travel while cutting the hayfield.

First I closed the yard gate to the road.  Then I went around to close most of the rest of the gates.  Then it was time to herd the cattle.  First it was from the hayfield to the yard.  Then it was from the NE pasture to the corral or yard.  I hadn't planned on the having the cattle in the yard anymore this year.  But because the manure from before hadn't completely dried out yet due to our rain I hadn't mowed the grass yet and it grew.  So I let the cattle stay in the yard.  I had to do a quick protection of some small trees and bushes.  I figure the cattle wouldn't be in the yard long so I didn't do the remaining usual protection.  I did have to pick up some stuff as the calves went crazy biting stuff then running around with it.

Earlier on the cattle didn't bother the walnut trees.   At the end of the day I seen them starting to eat the leaves.  Okay, much of the yard grass was now eaten down.  Time for the cattle to go into the NE pasture.  I'm not doing any more work to protect the yard stuff.  

Here the calves went into the tool shed and grabbed plastic garbage bags and spread them around the yard.

I had to close the garage door.  The door went off the rail on one side.  I got it fixed temporarily and closed the door most way.  A short time later I found the door partly open again.  A calf opened the door and was inside the garage checking everything out.  I had to herd the calf outside and work on getting the door to close more.

How did the cattle get out of the neighbor's field?  I walked down to find out how.  Well... the cattle figured out how to unhook the chain holding the gate closed.   When I have a real long chain I double run the chain through the hooks.  Donna doesn't complain anymore at how hard it can be to unhook the gate to open it.  She now knows how smart my cattle are.  I am going to have to modify the chain on the gate to the neighbor's field now that the cattle know how to unhook the chain.

When I was herding the cattle from the hayfield to the yard, slowing me down was some of the cattle wanting to rub again one of the hay bales.   Later when I walked over to check the gate to the neighbor's field I noticed one of the hay bales was tipped on its end.  The cattle tipped it over.

Here are the cattle today in the corral.  Most of the calves took a rest break there this afternoon.

Hay baling.   I got it done.  Which is good as today it rained.   I didn't get started baling until 1:45 pm.   I finished at 5 pm.   3 hours fifteen minutes.  It went well.  I only had one bale where a small part of the netwrap stayed attached to the baler.   My last bale was a half a bale.  That bale was starting to over-wrap and I had to stop and cut the netwrap off.

I ended up with 91 and 1/2 bales.   In 2020 I had 74 bales.  Last year, a slightly dry year I only had 56 bales.  So the fertilization helped this year.

All my bales at the end.  Does it look like 91 and 1/2 bales?

With the baling done yesterday I cleaned the hay baler.  I use an air hose to blow the dirt and debris out of and off the baler.  Usually probably an hour worth of work.  This time it took me 3 and 1/2 hours to clean the baler.  It was crazy.  As wet as this year was it is not dusty.  But I had lots of 'dust' on and in everything.  And the dust did not want to blow off.  I had to use a brush on the dust as I blew air on it.  And the dust would float around and around and re-coat the baler.  There would be less dust on the baler but I would have to brush and blow areas over and over repeatedly.

When cleaning the inner part of the baler I opened the back end up and locked it in place.  I would attempt to blow the dust out the other side.  But some of the dust would come back towards me re-coat my side.  So though it was hard to reach inside from the other direction, I tried to clean and blow the dust from the other direction in case the small breeze was from that side.  Again the dust came back towards me.  Crazy!  Crazy!   Not normal.  It was like my body was attracting the dust or affecting the gravity to pull the dust towards me.

I finally got the baler clean and I parked it.   3 and 1/2 hours of dust cleaning.  Why the 'dust' is so different this year is strange.  Is it because I fertilized the grass this Spring?

The dust had me coughing and coughing and I had to take a break and move away from the dust many times when I was cleaning.  The dust would float in the air.  Going this way and that way and up or down.  I had to wash off when done and try to clean my throat as it was getting harder to breathe. And my bare skin was getting a rash and welts.   It was clearing up by the time I went to sleep.

Even though baling is not hard work, the cat's and cattle's actions at disrupting my sleep, and then the dust reactions, made me tired.  I almost never go to sleep before midnight.  I went to sleep at 10:30 pm last night.  I left the door open for my cat to go in and out of the house.   He woke me up at 12:30 am, and again at 2:30 am.  Don't know why.  To let me know he was here?    I slept until noon today.   13 and 1/2 hours non-stop.

I woke up tired.   After breakfast - I hadn't eaten since breakfast the previous day - I went for a short bicycle ride to wake me up more.   After walking out to the pasture to check the pocket gophers traps I was tired.  Back to the house I laid down and was out cold for a half hour.  Then I spent 1 hour 45 minutes spraying weeds with my backpack sprayer and have been awake ever since.

What a day yesterday and today.

Starting to bale hay

I finished raking the hay rows this afternoon.   Then I immediately started my hay baling.  I got started hay baling at 2:45 pm.

If one hasn't used the netwrap in a long time one should "fiddle" with the netwrap before trying to netwrap the first bale.  I did the "fiddle".  This time it didn't work.  My first hay bale wasn't netwrapped.  I did more fiddling.  The netwrap worked on the second bale.  In fact I finally ran out of netwrap when netwrapping the bale.  I have a new roll of netwrap and I spent time loading it in the baler.  The second bale was then netwrapped.

The third bale had a problem as the bale was partially netwrapped.  Not good enough to hold the bale together when I would eventually move the bale.  It appears part of the netwrap had rolled around one of the rollers and not the bale.    When I loaded the new netwrap I was careful not to over-start the roll in the rollers as a side effect can be for the wrap to go around the roller and not the bale.  I'm sure I had done it correctly.  I cut the netwrap off the roller.

The fourth hay bale: everything worked as it should, and the bale was netwrapped nicely.  From then on most bales were netwrapped correctly.  I did have two bales where the netwrap didn't stop wrapping and I had to manually stop it.

And I had one bale where part of the netwrap got snagged on the baler.  Only a part of the netwrap so I can still move the bale and do not have to netwrap it again.

So I have two bales I have to unroll by hand so I can re-run the hay through the baler again so I can netwrap it correctly.   At the end of the baling this evening I unrolled one bale.  Then I coughed and coughed as the grass / pollen irritates me and the unrolling of the bale had stuff floating into the air.   The other bale I will unroll tomorrow.  When I unrolled the one bale I did notice a few pieces of wet grass or alfalfa in the bale.  While the grass and alfalfa mostly dried after I raked it, apparently not 100% dried.   I will wait till tomorrow to re-bale the bale I unrolled.

This year had been wetter than last year.  And I also fertilized the hayfield.  Last year I got 56 bales during the first hay cutting.  Today I made 66 bales so far.  I have more to do as I only was able to bale the rows I had raked on Thursday.  It was getting dark by the time I reached the rows I had raked today.  Still, approximately 60% of the rows have been baled.  I should be able to bale the rest of the rows tomorrow - unless something happens.   I need to be done by Saturday night as rain is coming on Sunday and I want all the hay baled before the rain arrives.

While I was baling the hay I saw this hawk (?) on the ground in an area where I already had baled the hay.  Was the hawk looking for a mouse now that the hawk can see the ground?  As I got nearer the hawk flew up into the tree by my patio.  The hawk was big.  My camera had to zoom a lot to get a good photo of this bird way up in the tree.

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.

Some rain

So much for the very slight chance of rain.   Earlier this afternoon I saw a cloud overhead.  Not really any clouds to the west or east of this cloud.  And this cloud was mainly overhead the hayfield, and not formed in the usual direction clouds form around here.  Please, no rain.

Then the cloud moved off and no rain.  Good.   Later in the afternoon while I was cleaning the haybine I heard a few low rumbles of thunder.  A kind-of cloud was overhead again.  Not much to the north or south in regard to clouds.  It didn't look like a rain cloud.  The cloud moved overhead and continued on eastward.  As the end of the cloud was overhead it began to rain.  What? Really?   A few moments later the sun came out as the cloud continued eastward.  The rain continued.  Then it got stronger.  I took refuge in the tractor.  After a bit I went in the house as it continued to rain.   It didn't look like rain to the north or south of me.  I called Donna to ask if it was raining at her place, and it was.  Finally it quit raining at my place.  Tonight I checked the weather service stats and they said we had gotten .05 of an inch of rain.  Enough to get stuff wet.  *argh!*   I'll see what tomorrow will bring as again there is a slight chance of rain in the afternoon.

Hay is cut

I finished cutting my hayfield today.  I wasn't sure I would get it all done as I got a later start than I expected.  A late start getting out of bed.  Then I had to go and fill the water trough for the cattle still in the neighbor's field.  The neighbor was outside and I talked with her.  She has two large trees and one is looking sickly.  I don't know why.  The other neighbor across the street was having her trees sprayed.  So I and the first neighbor went over and spoke with the person spraying the trees.  Once I got the ball started I turned it over to the neighbor to talk with the sprayer as what to do about her tree.

Since the fuel gauge on the tractor doesn't work, I don't trust how much diesel is in the tractor.  So I went about bought more diesel and then poured it into the tractor to fill the tank.

Since everything was dusty and dirty I got my air compressor out and blew the tractor and haybine clean.  The tractor windows were still dirty so I got water, towel and squeegee and cleaned all the tractor windows inside and out.

When I stopped hay cutting yesterday I had just reached the first power line tower.  I decided to use a hand scythe to cut the grass around the tower's legs.  It makes it easier and safer to cut around the legs.  This took time.  I only cleared the grass around one tower's legs as time had passed and I wanted to get to cutting the hay.

Then I had a full breakfast.  

After I started my tractor it stopped.  It hadn't done that in a while.   The tractor didn't want to restart.  It was like the motor wasn't getting any fuel even though the fuel tanks were full.  I had to use the tractor's fuel primer a few times in trying to start the tractor.  After 20 minutes or so the tractor finally started.

So I got a late start.  The cutting went well.  It had been 18 hours since I last cut the hay.  In the photo you can see the one cut I had done today versus the other cuts I did yesterday.  So the drying is happening.

As I hadn't got my full amount of sleep the night before, after a few hours I was starting to get tired.  So I stopped and went and refilled the cattle's water trough as it was pretty much empty.  As the tank filled I watched the cattle.   The newborn calf had woken up at the far end of the field and ran out to be with his mother.  After a bit he wandered here and there among the cattle getting closer to me.  He was jumping off-and-on and testing his ability to move around.

Once the trough was filled I got back to hay cutting.  I was awake now.  Just at dark I finished the hay cutting.  So I did get done.  Tomorrow I will use the hand scythe to cut the grass around the other power line tower's legs, and also clean and park the haybine.

Now to wait for the hay to dry.  Weather forecast is for temperature in the 80s tomorrow, then a few days of low 70s, then back to 80 degrees. We're finally warm.  It feels hot to me as I am still used to our earlier cold Spring. The slight chance of rain is now a very slight chance of rain.  Hopefully the hay dries sooner than later, though I imagine it may take a little longer than usual.