Friday, June 21, 2013

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.

 



3 comments:

  1. That's a lot of hay for just two people. How many bales do you do total throughout the summer?

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  2. Last year we put up about 7500 bales of hay and 250 or so of straw from the oats.

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  3. No wonder you're rail-thin!

    Yesterday, while at our car mechanic's shop, he was complaining, and rightly so, about buying an expensive part that requires replacing the gasket and the gasket does not come with it in the box. Really now, including it would go such a long ways towards mechanic/customer satisfaction.

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