It's haytime pt. 2

So last week has been Hay week. As mentioned earlier I cut, raked, bailed and stacked (almost done...be done tonight) our Hay. I also managed to help out a couple of folks and cut their hay (no raking, etc.). I also managed to buy a harrow bed. Got a good price and a white knuckle trip home with the harrow bed on my trailer. I've never pulled this much weight before (little over 10,000 # on the trailer) and it took me a minute to get used to how everything handled.

The harrowbed is a 6,000 pound monstrosity that picks up bails and makes a stack without having to get my little hands dirty. Well, in concept. It works, but needs some tweaking. In fact, Saturday I picked up a good stack and made my first hay pile. Hay pile you say? Well, I forgot to put in a second tie row (line of bails that adds stability to the stack) so about a quarter of it came tumbling down when I dropped it off. Oh well. Stuff happens. Sunday I made some adjustments and they made it so I could not get a single row of baios to stack in the harrowbed properly. It's a bit twitchy. Wadda you expect, it's 50 years old?

In any event, I want the first cut all in our barn for our critters and the harrowbed is just a touch too large to fit in the building, so the wife and I are moving bails in with the tractor and a pallet. Not real elegant, but does save a bit of heavy lifting.

We're going to shuffle animals around from one pen to another. The four big pigs are not enough to keep on top of the 3/4 acre pasture they're in. In fact the grass is taller than the pigs now. So bring on the goats. The 11 goats we have should be able to crop some of this down, and then I'll mow the rest and shuffle everyone again. The little pigs will end up in the buck pen and get some grass pasture access finally.

But all is not hay. The garden is growing like mad, my turkey/chicken/duck fertilized and weeded lawn is green as an emerald. We lost a duck to a raccoon. We ordered 100 Cornish cross chickens for outdoor system raising and filling our freezer. We also have 15 midget white turkeys on the way. Yum. We'll keep a few for breeding and see if we can make the Turkey business a regular thing.