Filed under: July 2018 | Tags: bed and breakfast, draft horses, Hay help, hay loft, hay tedder, haying, Spelt, speltz, straw
July 16, 2018
The last week has been a whirlwind! Hay dried very nice in the sun. We raked and baled, hauled and stacked until we got it all in off the fields without any of it getting wet.
I modified the the hay loft door and am able to set the hay bales up into the loft with the skidsteer. I can set 5 bales up before I have to go up and roll them out of the way. This makes haying much easier for me. Most importantly, I don’t need help. Hay help is getting harder and harder to find, having overcome this fact is awesome! I can store the equivalent of 400 small square bales by doing it this new way. I will unroll the bale at feeding time and fork the hay down chutes to the horse mangers below.
The speltz straw also had to be mowed and made ready to bale
The horses and I fluffed the straw with our hay tedder. There was a lot of nice, new seeded grasses in the straw. I treated this bounty as hay. The animals will get to eat anything they want, then sleep on the rest. It gives new meaning to “bed and breakfast”. It was a hot week. The temperatures were 90F and above for many of them. The horses and I both sweated together, but we made 42 nice bales. Those bales have all been hauled in and stacked near where they will be used.
We are now ready for some needed rain. We are thankful that it held off while we scrambled to get the last of the first cutting hay harvested, the speltz combined and the straw gleaned as well. Today, it’s hot and sticky, but all of us will rest and wait for the rain…while I make a new list of work for us all.
Filed under: June 2016 | Tags: draft horses, first cutting, hay tedder, haying, ice cream, making hay, steel wheels
June 15, 2016
Um, okay, steel wheels on the hay tedder, steel wheels on the forecart and a steel seat to sit on! Talk about a rough ride! After several hours over the last few days, all of our first cutting hay has been mowed, raked, tedded, raked again, baled and put away. The horses and I slept well last night. The tedder in the photo above is used to fluff the hay to aid in drying and curing. It is a simple machine that works like a dream…the ride, well it is more like a nightmare.
This forecart is where the horses hook on to the machine. I bought it from an Amish friend of mine. They are not allowed to use rubber tires, long story but part of their religious beliefs. I just figured what the heck, I’ll use it that way. It works fine, but I can see it will be a good thing to make my fields smoother. I will start using a thick pad in the meantime. The seat is not hard on my butt, it just makes my spine hurt. Those bumps go all the way to this old man’s neck!
I thought about using the filly yesterday, but then thought better of it. Her first hitch will probably be to the sled or wagon. I will get her used to the banging of a steel contraption behind her a little later in her training. Chances are, she would have been fine, but I didn’t want things to turn bad on a day when I had no help around in case it was needed.
We are a little slow around here this morning. We worked to almost midnight getting the hay all in and under cover. The equipment too was stored before I quit for the day. Now, we will move on to another project….the project of filling the woodshed. Good work for men and horses because we only work at it in the early morning, then again in the cool of evening. The afternoons are spent in the shade of a building working at some trivial task or perhaps eating ice cream 🙂
RicelandMeadows 