A Bad Baler Day

Some days in the hayfield are definitely better than others. I should have known when I got the phone call halfway to the field. After I had hitched up the trailer and driven as far as the post office, Whit called to ask me to go back for the new cutting knives he'd recently ordered.

Usually we do schoolwork until about lunchtime, then I load up TBear and Sunny and we head out to the field to bale and pick up the hay. Whit goes ahead of us to rake it into wind-rows and grease all the machinery. My job is to drive the tractor with the temperamental baler, while Whit and TBear follow with the haywagon and pick up and stack the bales to bring back to the barn.

I turned around at the Y (in the road, not the "Y" as in YMCA) in Mt Vernon and went home again for the knives. The day would turn out to be a total bust. The boys and I spent a few hours hanging around the hayfield waiting for Whit to replace the knives. That job didn't take too long. Figuring out why they still weren't cutting properly took the rest of the afternoon. The worst part about a day like this is not so much the waiting as the thinking that the next adjustment is going to do the trick. Poor Whit.

Thinking it will be a quick fix, TBear (and Sunny) run the knives down to Whit just over the hill to the left here. We've already cut and baled this section. The new part to bale is on the right.

Okay, so maybe it's not such a quick fix after all.

But we're being so patient.

Whit is replacing the cutting knives on our 1959 International Harvester baler.

See all the hay 'pooped' out the back? The baler won't tie it into bales for some reason. Sigh.

The nice, new, not ours, John Deere tractor. (It belongs to our hay partner. They were hoping it would make the baling smoother with the constant PTO, instead of using my wonderful old Farmall H. It was a false hope.) Sunny loves trucks...and tractors too, apparently. : )
Hours later, we're still hanging around waiting on the baler. While I feed countless amounts of hay into the thing, Whit makes adjustments and fiddles with it, all to no avail this day. Meanwhile, TBear teaches Sunny how to cut things using a pair of wire cutters on some twine. Who needs preschool?! : )
The rest of this story is that we bagged baling this day, and went home around 4:30 or 5pm. The next morning Whit returned with calipers and started at page one, measuring and making every single adjustment to the manual's specification. He also wound up putting the old knives back on. He's investigating whether the new ones were the right size, or whatever, for it because they just plain wouldn't work. We were back in business by 2pm or so.

This field gives me poison ivy. Every time we've cut and baled a section, I get fresh patches of it on my forearms from wrist to elbow. I'm contemplating buying stock in Calagel.

Fresh Air Friend

Our friend, Anthony, arrived from New York on July 8th this year for a two-week visit sponsored by the Fresh Air Fund. I was surprised, when we added it up this year, that this was Anthony's seventh summer visiting us! This is also the year that Anthony has grown taller than I am, and his feet are bigger too. In fact, he's also going into high school this year. So many changes in a year! Where does the time fly?!
July, unfortunately for Anthony, is usually the height of our haying season. July and August are when we finally have enough dry, sunny weather to get the hay stored in the barn for the coming winter. Anthony is a real trooper and pitches in to help with everyone else around here. He tells me he enjoys the job. All I know is that he keeps coming back, so maybe he really does. :)

This has not been an optimal summer for haying, however. In fact, it's been downright depressing. We had planned to start haying in June and get possibly three cuttings in this summer. Ah, yeah...the best laid plans of mice and men. Instead, June was a total washout... we had almost three solid weeks of rain. July was only marginally better. The rain let up a little, but not enough to make any real progress. So far, we have only been able to cut enough grass for about 250-300 bales at a whack because that's all we can dry, bale and pickup by the time afternoon showers roll through every few days. I think we've got about 500 bales in our barn and 1000 in our hay partner's barn. At that rate, it's going to take a long time to get the 2000 bales we need for the winter in our barn, never mind what we usually sell as extra. Farmers around here are exceedingly concerned.

Pictured here is a typical afternoon. See how dark it is? We got to the field around lunchtime to start baling and picking up. It hadn't started raining yet, but it was very cloudy and threatening. The weather prediction had been for sunshine a day longer, but this is New England. It was too late for us to change plans once the hay was cut and lying in the field. We have to do our best to get it baled and picked up as quickly as possible. The issue is if it doesn't dry enough before we start baling, it just molds and rots. It's junk after that.

I drove around baling the hay, while the guys and my sister followed close behind picking up bales as fast as they could. (My sister Julie's out front, Whit's stacking, and TBear's driving the tractor. )
It started to drizzle by 2pm, and then it just opened up and flat out rained. The boys were literally running around the field trying to get the hay loaded. There was no hope that day for the grass. I stopped baling and let it all lay. We packed it up and went home.

Our slightly soggy hay crew, minus my sister and Whit. ; )

This particular story actually had a happy ending though. The next day turned out to be unexpectedly beautiful, sunny, and hot. (Fortunately that New England thing was working for us this time. :) It was perfect drying weather. We salvaged that field of hay by tedding it again and letting it dry out completely before we baled it.

Thanks to the frequent showers, it wasn't all work while Anthony was here. Usually I get lots of pictures, but I've sort of fallen down on the photo thing this summer. I did take the boys down to the town landing for some fishing and swimming. We spent another afternoon at a friend's house on another pond where the boys were able to swim some more and do some kayaking.

Here, Whit and the boys went sailing. (See? I'm having photo issues... I didn't get there until they'd come back and had already picked up the mooring and were dropping the sails.)
We hope Anthony enjoyed being here again this summer as much as we enjoyed having him. He's a great kid, and we look forward to doing it all again next year!