gotmyfarm!
Member
Oh what fun it is to ride my favorite tractor, pulling the fiesta-colored hay rake! Ya, I don't care if the tractor is overpowered for pulling the little rake. I like driving it more than the M and will use it for everything except sickle-ing.
I'm doing a small field of overgrown waist high Timothy grass and knee high alfalfa, for a test of the hay making machines. Boy, that sickle cuts nice. Too bad I broke it. Right before I started. Still worked without the spring. There is a large spring that assists to manual lift lever and also stabilizes the big base part of the cutter bar, and I was lifting the lever and the spring broke. I got off and looked at it and it had already been broken before and had broken now where someone put little spots of weld on it. Then I got back on the M and couldn't get it started. So I just got on my favorite IH666 tractor and brush hogged the rest of the field. You might think that it would pulverize the grass and be non-existent then to use for baling, but the grass was SO LONG, that it came out nice. I waited until noon today to rake it and so far, raking is my favorite machine and job. Great little unit. In case anyone doesn't know why I call it the Fiesta Rake, it's because it's orange and blue and yellow and black. Found another piece of that truck top that tore through that field a week or two ago during one of the big storms.
So, I noticed that when I had a bigger swath of grass to rake, it rolled up on itself as it went to the left, and when it was thinner grass being raked it didn't roll but just kind of fluffed itself forward and sideways. Is that how it's supposed to work? I sure like raking, did I say that already? Tomorrow or Friday is try-out-the-old-baler day. Pretty skeptical and nervous about how that's going to go... Really hope it makes bales because this grass is excellent. Overgrown, but no weeds and less sugar for my fat ponies.
The one 10 acre field on the other side of the property is newly seeded for horse hay with a cover crop of oats. Those oats have already been mowed down once because of thistle control maybe 3 weeks ago. They have re-grown and are thicker than ever. They are at milk stage, so next week, if the baler turns out to work okay, I will cut and bale the oats and hope what springs up over there next will be Timothy and other grasses I seeded. I have one other field that was planted the same as this one with the nice oat cover crop, but it has weeds on it too for some reason, so yesterday/last night I brush hogged it down in hoped of killing or stunting the weeds and giving the seeded grasses more space and sun and a better chance to grow and mature. The alfalfa there is looking good though. There was no sign of Timothy seed heads yet. Lost the oats that were growing there but had to cut because of weeds. Most were harmless weeds like foxtail and what was the other I'm not sure what it is. Reddish stem base, very tall, fine branched, fluffy seedy tops.
This is all so fun.
I'm doing a small field of overgrown waist high Timothy grass and knee high alfalfa, for a test of the hay making machines. Boy, that sickle cuts nice. Too bad I broke it. Right before I started. Still worked without the spring. There is a large spring that assists to manual lift lever and also stabilizes the big base part of the cutter bar, and I was lifting the lever and the spring broke. I got off and looked at it and it had already been broken before and had broken now where someone put little spots of weld on it. Then I got back on the M and couldn't get it started. So I just got on my favorite IH666 tractor and brush hogged the rest of the field. You might think that it would pulverize the grass and be non-existent then to use for baling, but the grass was SO LONG, that it came out nice. I waited until noon today to rake it and so far, raking is my favorite machine and job. Great little unit. In case anyone doesn't know why I call it the Fiesta Rake, it's because it's orange and blue and yellow and black. Found another piece of that truck top that tore through that field a week or two ago during one of the big storms.
So, I noticed that when I had a bigger swath of grass to rake, it rolled up on itself as it went to the left, and when it was thinner grass being raked it didn't roll but just kind of fluffed itself forward and sideways. Is that how it's supposed to work? I sure like raking, did I say that already? Tomorrow or Friday is try-out-the-old-baler day. Pretty skeptical and nervous about how that's going to go... Really hope it makes bales because this grass is excellent. Overgrown, but no weeds and less sugar for my fat ponies.
The one 10 acre field on the other side of the property is newly seeded for horse hay with a cover crop of oats. Those oats have already been mowed down once because of thistle control maybe 3 weeks ago. They have re-grown and are thicker than ever. They are at milk stage, so next week, if the baler turns out to work okay, I will cut and bale the oats and hope what springs up over there next will be Timothy and other grasses I seeded. I have one other field that was planted the same as this one with the nice oat cover crop, but it has weeds on it too for some reason, so yesterday/last night I brush hogged it down in hoped of killing or stunting the weeds and giving the seeded grasses more space and sun and a better chance to grow and mature. The alfalfa there is looking good though. There was no sign of Timothy seed heads yet. Lost the oats that were growing there but had to cut because of weeds. Most were harmless weeds like foxtail and what was the other I'm not sure what it is. Reddish stem base, very tall, fine branched, fluffy seedy tops.
This is all so fun.