And Then It Stopped Raining

Remember May?  Wet, cold May?  One extreme follows another they say, and that proved true for June.  For the first time ever we were able to cut and bale all our first cutting hay - in JUNE - without it getting rained on.

Andy would cut enough hay to fill the five wagons in a go and we worked day by day to cut, ted, rake, bale and unload one field after another.

It got hot as well as dry.  We had some pretty sunsets but the clouds never carried rain.

Then we started trying to work even faster because the standing hay was actually shrinking - drying out as it stood and losing volume.  You can see the landscape has turned from green around the edges to just dried out tan.  Unless we get some decent rain there won't be a second cutting which would be a big problem.

Thank goodness for the kicker on the baler.  Pulling bales from the chute with a hay hook was a lot easier 30 years ago.  :-/

The sheep spend parts of the day searching the pasture for forage and other chunks of time hanging out in the shade behind the barn.  So far no one is coming in hungry but we've started putting some leftover hay from last year in the feeders at night so there's something to work on if they feel empty.  They are pretty grimy, though.  Lanolin + dust = grungy wool.  When it does start raining again they are going to find themselves locked out in it.

Pretty soon we'll have to turn them back into the south pasture that they've been in once already but there isn't much new there.  The plants are mostly ankle high except for seed heads that are taller and it has the pale gray-green shade of really dry plants.

Still, the sheep have nothing to do all day except meander around looking so they will find enough until it rains again.   Bale count is 4488.  With no lambs this year it's possible that we could squeak by without a second cutting especially if it rains normally and the pastures regrow as they should.  Theoretically we could keep the flock on pasture into November.  If anybody knows a good rain dance........

Fickle June

April and even May are supposed to be the months with big temperature swings.  This year June followed along.  Last weekend was the Central New York Fiber Arts Festival  and I took a day and trekked out there to investigate.  It was gray, rainy, very windy and in the low (low) 50s.  I ended up wearing four layers and lunching on hot sausage with peppers and onions topped off with hot coffee to try to keep warm.

The venue is very nice.  Long tents of vendors were laid out facing other tents that had a fleece sale, workshops, kids' area and sheep shearing trailer.  Despite heavy rain Saturday the grounds were not muddy and the vendor booths inside were fine.  The tents were high and quite bright inside despite the gray day.

There were supplies for spinners, knitters and other fiber artists and also a lot of finished goods for non-fiber people.  I picked up a couple of well-crafted items that are destined to be Christmas presents.  (Ha!  Got started on that  list!)

There were several vendors with fiber animals in their space and one farm brought one of their LGDs (livestock guard dog) along too.  This sweetie is Aziza (I think that's right) and she's an Akbash.   She's nine years old and is built tall and long bodied with a very coarse, short hair coat. She was a great ambassador.

She was unfailingly polite and friendly to everyone and people were petting her all day.  She never seemed concerned at the strangers petting 'her' lambs, but she did bark a deep bark when a border collie went past the end of her tent.  These little Tunis lambs were her charges for the day.

Another fun attraction was The Gypsy Tinker's wagon.  I must admit, it's a mighty seductive way to travel to shows - cuter and less costly than a commercial camper and the owner built the entire thing herself on a good old Tractor Supply trailer bed.

Apparently, Gypsy wagons are a 'thing' and popular with people who have construction ability and a nomadic bent.

Wow, if you could just pack all your vendor materials in the back of your pickup with some extras in the wagon and hit the road.......

All in all it was a fun day!

That was Sunday.  Tuesday it was sunny and 70 at home and Andy turned this....

...into this.

We unloaded three wagons last night and two this morning and he finished the field before 1 PM this afternoon.  That made somewhere over 900 bales, so we're off to a good start. We haven't been able to bale hay in June in some years - it's been wet until July.  We need rain, but if we can't have rain we'll sure take hay!

Bits and Pieces

A brief recitation of events since the last post........

Way too much of this.....

Followed by this......

Means we have done blessed little of this (two sessions - about 800 bales so far).......

On one of the far-too-infrequent hottish days I treated myself to lying on the patio concrete for a little while and found I had company.  Like minds. Heh.

I did some dyeing to finish up a colorway I'm out of - Twilight Time.  This is the spruce component.

My friend Julie and I went to visit Thecrazysheeplady of Punkin's Patch in Kentucky and had a marvelous time.  We came through torrential rain as we neared the farm and so an escort met us at a corner.  Yes, that's a lamb.  She loves to ride in the car.  Being an escort was likely her idea.  ;-)

"C'mon, follow us!  You're almost there!"

Saturday night we went to a friend's house for dinner on the deck and Liddy the lamb went too, sitting politely next to me on the back seat.

The property is located just above a quarry - a rock quarry, that is - so there are lots of building materials lying about.

Liddy was interested in the heavy machinery.  Headed to a trade school when she grows up, I bet.

"Yes, much more efficient than shovels and wheelbarrows!"

"Aw, mom, I could totally have driven that.  The boys at home told me how."

Sunday we went to church, which is about the best church I've been in since they allow dogs (and lambs on occasion).  Miss Tilly and Kate went along, sharing the back seat with me.  Kate was eventually IN my lap being hugged which was fine by both of us.  :-)

All the rest of Sunday we dyed wool which was a first for Thecrazysheeplady but she handled it very well and got some great results.  It was huge fun and I was sad when the weekend ended too soon, as wonderful weekends tend to do.

On the way home we transported a young English Setter named Jed back to our area where the new owner picked him up.  It was a serendipitous series of associations and timing and worked well for everyone in the end.

"Crated in the back seat with AC, a blanket and cookies after every rest stop - a dog could get used to this."

And I managed to get a whole lot done on a scarf I've been knitting.

The little kitten I rescued in June, now named Popeye, is doing much better and has a new bed thanks to Thecrazysheeplady's cat Betsy not wanting it.  Thanks, Betsy!

And after an evening of playing a lap is good too.

Oh, to be a happy little kitten!

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.



 





Doing It The Hard Way....But Doing It!

The weather forecast was looking good for the weekend, so we cut enough hay to keep plenty busy.  Saturday started great, with the field on the south side of the house ready to bale.  This is the timothy that Andy seeded with last year's oats. 

Just getting under way

Part way into the second wagon Andy came in with news that a part had failed.  One of the rollers that moves the belt that throws the bales (the ejector) had snapped.  Welding it wasn't going to be an option because of where the break occured within the roller.  We tried calling the dealer, whose store was closed (of course - Saturday afternoon), but he would send the shop foreman to check the inventory for the part.  That would take a couple of hours.  Rather than not be able to bale at all, Andy disabled the ejector and folded it up out of the way.  He could still bale, they would just fall on the ground and need to be picked up and loaded by hand.  When problems crop up we never say 'die' (although we say a heck of a lot of other words).

We were fortunate that Red was available to drive the tractor later.  Andy could walk in a zigzag between two rows of dropped bales and heave them onto the wagon for me.  I could then stack them neatly in the wagon. 

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, but more and bigger.  This time we were working in the lowest east pasture below the sheep barn.  The pasture had gotten so mature that there was no way the flock would make efficient use of it while it was still standing. Furthermore, they would NOT want to venture out into grass growing over their heads where they couldn't see their flockmates or potential danger (or even the way back to the barn!) The logical thing to do would be take it off as hay and let the flock down there after it grows back.  We are fortunate that it's atypically dry or we'd never get heavy machinery down there.  Well, we might get it down there but have a b**ch of a time getting it back!

Right now the sheep are working in the middle pasture, just above this one.  That one also could have been baled but then there would really be no place for them to graze, so we compromised - Andy ran the brush hog over it on the highest setting to take off the seed heads and reveal the undergrowth for better grazing.

The sheep seem to like the tire tracks and follow them into the field like pre-made trails.

The section we were baling was only about half the pasture.  That was all Andy figured we could reasonably manage, and that was before the ejector broke.  He raked up half the cut hay and started baling it while I raked up the other half.

It's a looong field.

...bale....ptooie....bale....ptooie.......bale.....ptooie....

The sheep were enjoying a great day - very windy, so no flies or bugs to bother them.

We finally got done baling about 5:30, so then we could start to work.  This time Julie got to be the driver.  We were lucky our two pals were available to help or we would have had to set the tractor into a granny gear and let it roll along by itself (with additional dashes over to make course corrections when it started to wander) while Andy picked up bales.  It would work and we both remember our fathers doing it when necessary, but it certainly would not be optimal.

OK.... Number one.....

We finally finished and got the loaded wagons under cover around 8:30.  Then we could do our regular 'sheep chores'.  Supper was lamb burgers and a tossed salad at 10:00 PM.  I'm pleased to report that neither of us was bedridden Monday morning.  Andy hadn't done that particular job for 35 years nor had I stacked on a wagon for 28. Apparently, you never forget the motions and I could still loft them five tiers high although I admit that toward the end I was making noises like a tennis diva hitting the ball.  (HAA!.......UNGH!......HHNG!). We handled 650 bales this way (still have to UNload the wagons but we would have had to do that anyway) which amounts to a little over fourteen and a half tons.  Total bales for the weekend was 1,050. 

You can romanticize about the good old days all you want, but give me hydraulics and pistons and mechanized efficiency any day.