Making Hay

[DMF]

Did my own second cutting (at least the first part of it) last week. I have an arrangement with a retired gentleman who usually cuts our hay for us. He takes 60% and leaves us 40% to sell on our own. If we sell any of his for him, we give him $1 per bale. Works out good for me and it suits him fine as well. Last month he fell about 10 feet in his barn. Broke a rib and actually whacked his head hard enough that 3 days later he had to have surgery to relieve the pressure from fluid in his head. Needless to say, he can’t drive his tractor around or finish his haying this year. I’ve helped him out as much as I could in the past so I offered to do the work if he would supervise/teach me. He thought it was a great idea. I have a couple of photos of me cutting the hay.

 

[DMF]

The tractor is a 40HP Ford which is a little bigger than my MF 1433V. Here you can see the cutterbar. My “teacher” is in the background picking out the milkweed.

 

[DMF]

Coming up the hill along the west side of the field. Mr. C. used to use a smaller tractor, closer in size and HP to my Massey with this same equipment. He said the cutter, tedder, and rake were no problem but the baler would “push him along” on some of the steeper fields he mowed. This Ford weighs almost 1,000 pounds more than my tractor. I used my tractor to tedder though (didn’t want “Fergy” to get too jealous). I think my tractor could handle the cutting as well but I only have a two-range transmission which really makes it hard to find the right ground speed. Time to upgrade!

 

[DMF]

This was the end of my first pass with Mr. C. looking on. I don’t have any other pictures of me haying this section, hopefully my wife will take some when I do one of the other two areas I have left. I cut and teddered on a Thursday afternoon/evening; teddered twice on Friday; teddered again Saturday morning; raked around 1:30 (we had 8 – 12% moisture content on the meter throughout the field at that time) and finished baling around 4 – 4:30. I got 169 bales out of this section which is the smallest section we have but it has the most clover in it. A guy raising beefers bought most of it. If the weathers good I’ll start on the next section this week. I know this is old hat to a lot of you here, but it was a lot of fun for me. My experience with hay has always been the handling of it, never really making it. This part kind of makes the handling of it more bearable!

 

[buckle97]

Thanks for the pictures. Be sure to post more! I really enjoy seeing other people enjoying their tractor work!

Lawrence

 

[Larstan]

Good stuff DMF, sounds like you got a nice symbiotic relationship going their. I am sure Mr. C is a wealth of knowledge and I hope he is O.K......

 

[diggerman]

it's fun when you start but after doing it for 8 years it gets boring.

 

[Jim57]

Thank you for sharing this. I use to help get it out of the field. Never got to cut it. I spent a lot of my summers in a hay field.

Jim

 

[ptfarmermd]

I know what you mean about handling and making hay. I used to cut, rake and bale about 900 - 1,000 bales every year. The equipment was a 1949 Ferguson TO-20 tractor, a MF 6 foot sickle bar mower, a MF bar (later a Tonutti wheel) rake, a 1950 something New Holland baler (no thrower, had to stack the hay on the wagon), and of course the hay wagon. Most of our fields were timothy, orchard grass and clover, with a good bunch of weeds thrown in to make it interesting. Nothing like repairing the wad board assembly laying on your back in a clump of mostly dry thistles.

Since the baler did not have a kicker, I had to have help making the hay. I would drive the tractor, and someone else would stack the hay. The hilly, rocky sections we would baler and drop the bales on the ground, then pick up later.

It was hot, dusty work, but fun. I loved watching the windrow be picked up by the baler and then be pushed out the other end.

 

[Slamfire]

When we got the Ford 8N, we shortened the tounge on all the horse drawn equipment, Granddad had. No bailer, though, one of the neighbors came for that. The first one I remember was an orange round bailer, I was too young to remember the name. But the tractor matched, and we used the belt drive to saw stove wood.. Later we got the use of a square bailer, and a chain saw. We considered our selves in high cotton. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif