As I continue doing my things around here, the grandkids, the garden, the house, and a craft or two… the guys are still working. We try to take Sundays off, but sometimes it’s only half a day.
Everyone irrigates. Irrigation continues morning and evening, especially with this stifling heat.
Someone usually checks on cows, hauling salt and mineral, looking for summer pneumonia and doctoring if necessary, checking water, and repairing fences.
The guys are haying… Daniel cutting, Brandon baling, Vernon raking or helping where needed.
Then there are repairs… tires, hydraulic hoses, bearings, and every little piece of complicated machinery!
I ran down to the other place to take a couple of photos of the guys putting up our horse hay in the top of the barn. It’s horrible drydustystickyitchy work. I helped many moons ago until Vernon banned me… hay dust and my allergies are not friendly. I did figure I could stand back and take photos, though.
Of course, I didn’t get there early enough. If you’re gonna be drydustystickyitchy you might as well try to do it when it’s cool-ish.
Our horse hay supply is small bales. You can see the difference on the trailer. While I missed putting the bales into the barn, we also use this in our calving shed, and I trailed after the guys, playing tourist with my camera.
First, remove the “picket fence” from the area we store it in.
Then carefully back up the trailer into position. I’d fail tremendously at this…
Daniel’s pitching them down to Brandon inside the shed.
When I first came to the ranch, we did all of the hay in little bales. Five or six years later, we bought our first big baler.
Brandon stacks them neatly. Anyone that’s ever lifted a bale knows that knees are extremely important for that extra oomph it takes to stack them high.
Being tall doesn’t hurt either.
Another chore done… and it’s back to baling big bales…
Find me here!
So you do the horse hay in small bales because there aren’t as many horses?? The big bales (big round ones?) are for the cows because there’s lots more of them?
I wouldn’t like stacking any of them. My eyes itched just looking at the pictures.
Hi Carol! I’m stumped. You wrote, “ Our horse hay supply is small bales. You can see the difference on the trailer.” I don’t get it. What difference can you see on the trailer? What is different? Not a big deal, of course, just something I couldn’t make sense of.
I used to like baling time, not so much the itchy and to some degree the heat but the overall experience. I liked raking the hay, stacking the hay on the wagon as we baled, unloading the wagon onto the elevator, the stacking in the haymow maybe not so much. Back then it wasn’t a problem to get help, now no one stacks the hay on the wagons off of the baler because there’s no help available. All there was back then was small bales, I know, I’m dating myself. lol.