Stranger Things

So.... 2020.  Quite the year, huh?  I'm waiting for either the asteroid to hit us or the aliens to land.  It's been that strange.  This particular bit of weirdness is the drought in our area.  Rains have been extremely spotty and fifty miles away things look normal.  Not us - we have a drought.  We aren't California-dry, but we are dry enough to burn up the pastures and have to pull the sheep in four weeks earlier than usual.  There is just nothing out there to eat and they are pulling grass out by the roots.  We can't let them damage the pasture or next spring will be a disaster.  We have enough hay for a regular winter feeding season but not an extra four weeks.  We've never had to buy hay before - ever - but, well.....2020.

We are very fortunate to have been able to secure 20 giant square bales from a neighbor.  The good news is that the hay is very good and the sheep accepted it right away.  The awkward part is the size.  We are used to feeding small square bales that weigh about 40 lbs.  These weigh 700 lbs.

If they don't already know, somebody needs to tell NASA about the poly twine that binds them.  We can carry the bale with the tractor by slipping the tines of the bucket under the twine and lifting.  Tough stuff!

The bales come apart in tightly compressed flakes which we load on a cart and roll into the interior of the barn and then heave in the manger and pull them apart by hand.  Andy's wearing a mask due to allergies, not Covid, just in case you wondered.

We've found curious things in our own hay bales over the years, usually unfortunate snakes or frogs, once an entire eight point deer antler, the occasional rock, but in today's bale we found this. Clearly it's a fragment of some tool but it's a puzzling mix of lightweight fragile wood and machined hard plastic.

The six holes go all the way through but don't show any signs of wear.

The plastic is embedded in a nicely machined wooden slat at a purposeful angle and we're guessing the plastic bit is a bumper or spacer of some kind that another moving piece slid over but we can't puzzle out what this is a part of.

.One of the more innocent mysteries that is the year 2020!

Life's Messy - Clean it Up

That was the slogan of some paper towel brand many years ago.  If only some messes were that easily taken care of.

The pillars of silage left behind when the Mennonite folks took down two of our silos were still here this spring - sadly, no magic snow fairies whisked them away during the winter.  Andy was able to remove some of it with the tractor bucket last year but the concrete staves still embedded in the ground were reinforced with metal rods which would puncture a tractor tire faster than you could say "Oh, $*%&$!" if you ventured over them.  We needed something with a longer reach.

Thankfully, the neighbor who installs fence also does backhoe work and was available (due to heavy rain making a swamp of the fence job he was working) to come and dig the old silage out and load it on the dump wagon so Andy could then discard it at the edge of the woods. It will rot down quickly - the loads he took there last summer were already hardly noticeable.  What a pleasure to see the big job be done so quickly and with such a masterful hand!



There was two days worth of digging here.  It was amazing that the silage in the very bottom was still pleasant to smell.  I don't know if animals would have wanted it but it was a nice surprise to us that it wasn't foul to work around.   You can see how far down he was reaching - that void will have to be filled and the ground graded and seeded. 
When he was done he loaded himself back on the trailer.  It made me think of a hen settling herself down on a nest - careful approach, shimmy a little to get just right, settle down.... ahhhh.  (I have no idea what those buzzing sounds partway through are - maybe that mothership trying to contact me again.)

Better...... I guess.  It looks pretty naked and shabby with circa 1964 sheet metal and unpainted wood exposed for the world to see.  

Eeesh, it doesn't exactly enhance the look of the place but at least now Andy can reach the building to start to dismantle it.  First though he has to fill those craters left by the removal of the spoiled silage.  We have a very large mound of mixed stone left from the reclamation of the gas well drilling area and that will be put to good use here.  (Well, some of it - it's a very large pile).  But the silage is gone and that's a good thing.

One more chunk of a very big job done!

Summer's Here!

The calendar says so, and so does the workload.  We are now into hay season and will continue as long and as fast as the weather (and our stamina) allow.

This field, closest to the house, has an alfalfa and grass mixture.  The grass is a teensy bit older than we'd like but the alfalfa portion is perfect.

Raking it into windrows

 

Three full wagons - about 375 bales of the 960 that came off this field

 

Ready to unload into the hay mow

 

One unexpected wrinkle is that the 1066 tractor needs to go to the dealer's for repairs.  A while ago they installed a new fuel injector pump and ever since it's been lacking power when under a load.  Turns out those pumps should really be replaced at a dealership so they can put the tractor on a dynamometer to make sure the timing is correct.  It would have been nice to know that before they put it in.

 

Anyway, the trailer came this morning to fetch it.

 

Andy drives it on.....

 

 

Chains are secured front, back and sideways, then the driver asks about a possible shortcut to another place he has to go.



 

Off it goes, and hopefully it will come back soon and working properly.  We're not looking forward to the bill, but machinery has to work.

 

 

Back to work for us.  We're burning daylight and there's still twelve hours to put to good use.



 





We Don't Really Plan to Collect Antiques on Purpose......

.......it's just that with our size of farm and bank account the older equipment is usually what we can afford.

Among other things, we raise oats.  Andy started doing that shortly after the dairy cattle were sold in 2000.  We feed some of the grain to the sheep, sell some and use the straw as bedding in the barn.  We generally plant somewhere between 12 and 18 acres, depending on what field is being rotated into or out of something.  Since we did not have a combine we always had to find someone to come and harvest the grain for us.  Those folks that had such machinery were either farming on a large scale themselves or had old (read:  really, really worn) equipment.  Each year we'd hold our breath as the oats got close to being ready.  Would the big guy be able to get away from his 500 acres to do our 15 before that hurricane comes up here to die?  Is the other guy's old equipment still running or did it break this week and we have to wait while he tries to fix it?  Will it drop half the oats in the field like last year or dump huge amounts of ragweed seed into the bin like the year before?  Every year has been an adventure in acid reflux while waiting to see how things would shake out.

 Last year was the kicker - the oats were ready, the fellow with old equipment had been notified the week prior that they would be ready to harvest, and by mid-week (with hurricane remnants predicted for the weekend) when he hadn't gotten in touch, we called him only to be told that he couldn't to it today because he really wanted to go to Empire Farm Days. (Picture facepalm and cursing)  It all worked out - the oats got combined and the straw baled literally hours before the start of a week-long rain event - but we decided we weren't going to go another year having to depend on someone else's schedule.

Enter our newest acquisition.......

A John Deere 4400 self-propelled combine, circa 1972.  It's 40 years old, but runs well and should last us as long as we want to use it.  There are some cosmetic issues, but what 40 year old doesn't have those?  A few things really do need attention - lack of brakes is kind of a biggie (they had been using the hand brake but we'd like something better), and one tire needs replacing but we have one the right size sitting on a shelf.

It was an Oversize Load going up the expressway.  You can kind of see that the big tires are only hanging on by half the width.  It's still small by today's standards. 

But it's plenty big enough for us when measured against our big pile of logs.  Getting it maneuvered into a building for the winter will be a treat.

Used combine, trucking expense, pending repairs..... a not-insignificant chunk of change.
Not being dependant on someone else to harvest your crop.....priceless.