Another 40 round bales for the cats to patrol and the skunks to stink up! Nice to finally get out of the woods with the needs lately. Had a lot of help from old friends and a new neighbor or two. Well's done just the water softener to hook up after the 220vac and 110vac is rewired. New commode tank fill valves too. New electric hot water heater, life is good and simple if you blow off the nay·say·ers and malcontents. Now to make it to the Doc for a reading on the torn rotator cuff. Arm is now functional if a bit sore. PT on the to do list and hopefully no surgery. Y'all have a great weekend. EDIT Just Seen another pick up and trailer leaving with kids toys etc, maybe a CCP Virus loss of a home over their head.
Hay season was fun for me...nothing like a full day's honest work followed by a good home-cooked meal with all the helpers gathered around the table... Of course, that has been...several years ago. Round bales were rarely talked of, let alone seen.
The local guys are just now rolling up the first cutting. Usually, there's three in this area, but with the weather, there's some grumbling about maybe not getting a second cut before it's wilted.
Same here, all small square bales picked up by hand and hay hook, stacked deep on a flat bed trailer and a 1/4 ton Ford pick em up, all natural and now a hated invasive grass that will kill live stock all from the Trinity River bottom lands and only Johnson grass. Always roll it away from you as sooner or later a deadly snake would be waiting. Today I had the best coastal ever, no junk, no stubble and for sure a well cared for hay field only a few miles way.
For me I help out a bud in Nebraska and we bailed and bailed and bailed for days here in Illinois One day two maybe done but that on and on hot covered in hay. Good training for the Military though when it sucked you just keep going just like bailing hay And thanks for the non political post we need more of this just my 2 cents and worth just a much
So a hay story - I'm 7 years old and we are visiting my mother's uncle, well into his 60s at the time. Mom asks him to get me out from under foot, so out we go in his old Dodge dually flat rack, sort of an oversized pickup, and go off to find the hired hand. Found, and back to a field with neat rows of hay. Now it ain't obvious, but Burt does NOT like tractors, he has two, neither of which run, and he's not a mechanic other than the milking machines (his hands, ya see.) All of his farming is done with hay burners. He says they ALWAYS start and don't backfire in the hay barns. AND they steer themselves when dragging a rake (or almost anything else, including plows.) "Boy, can you steer this truck?" Dunno uncle, show me? "OK we are lined up between these two rows of hay. All you have to do is keep it straight between the rows. Think you can?" Dunno, but get me started. So he leans in, right foots the clutch, drops it into granny gear, pulls out the hand throttle, and off we go, he's on one row, the hired hand on the other with pitchforks and commence heaping hay on the flatty (what's a baler for other than taking up shed space?) I have a two handed grip on a steering wheel that seems must be 4 feet wide for leverage. Well, four feet isn't enough for a scrawny youngster, and I'm all over the field, and I do NOT mean between the rows. So that exercise didn't last long, he leans in, pulls it into neutral and puts me on top of the hay pile with directions to keep the pile level. He puts the wheel in beckets, pulls out the hand throttle and off that ol' truck goes in as pretty as you please, a STRAIGHT line between the rows while he and the hired hand cover me in hay.-- That would be a good story if it weren't true. Well, I suppose it's a good one anyway.
What was left to do by 1100. Finished all 40 bales in storage lot This was found last night at quitting time, except full of Yellow Jackets, just behind my right ankle.
Mine consists of one trailer load of 8 rolls to feed my one remaining steer. One of the more happy days of my life was when my old square bailer went down the driveway on it's way to somebody else's house.
