Making Hay - part 2

Our next haying effort would be the seven-acre expanse just below our driveway called the Hillside Field. Once again, I summoned Randy for a refresher of running the mower.  The Hillside Field is in the shape of a long rectangle, so I would run the mower all the way across and then back.  Since it was so large, with few hands to help, the plan would be to cut the field in half and limit our efforts to the upper section of the field only.  There were some steep pitches at the top where I would need to downshift to “B-1” so the tractor wouldn’t get going too fast.  Since that was the scariest part of the field, I made Randy keep watch while I made the first few passes just in case something went horribly wrong.  After a few minutes of that tedium, Randy was more than ready to get going with his day and left me to the rest.  After a handful of back and forths, I finally found my groove, although there were a few things I had to pay attention to.  I needed to constantly monitor what was going on behind me since sometimes the mower would get gummed up with too much grass and would start smushing the grass down instead of cutting.  Randy had instructed me if this happened to give the mower control bar on the tractor a short lift and drop to clear out the clump. I needed to do this a few times, and his trick seemed to work quite well. 

Despite feeling like I had finally taken command of maneuvering the tractor and the attached mower, I did not finish my task without incident.  In the center of this field, just after I would have made my final turn to make my last pass with the mower, is a telephone pole.  Of course, I knew it was there.  I even had a plan how I would cut the grass as close to it as possible before navigating around it.  Unfortunately, I failed to recognize how much wider the mower blade was to the tractor.  The entire time I was mowing, I felt like I was merely chugging along at a snail pace, but once that telephone pole was before me, I knew there was no way I could stop this ship before impact.  Once the tractor had made its pass, looking behind me, I could see that the mower blade would take a direct hit.  The telephone pole was unfazed by this altercation, but the mower blade that was supposed to be off to my left, in an instant was flung straight back behind me.  Oh dear!  I powered down and hopped off to inspect.  I needed assistance, stat! 

I wandered aimlessly around the field until my cell phone indicated a single bar of service, and immediately called Randy who thankfully was available to answer my panicked call.  He was on site within minutes and assured me that despite the appearance that I had busted this thing beyond repair, the mower had a safety mechanism to avoid mechanical collapse in situations exactly like this one.  The mower blade was designed to float along, mowing away with a spring ready to engage upon sudden and unexpected impact.  Fortunately, our current problem was simply realigning the mower blade back to its left facing position.  However, since it took a direct hit with a telephone pole to get the safety spring to engage in the first place, two people pushing like hell were not going to get it reset to its appropriate position.  Randy, having confessed that he experienced a similar collision once during his amateur tractoring days, was ultimately able to correct the blade position by slowly backing up the tractor towards a tree until the tree and blade made contact. He then continued the slow progression backward until the spring hit its threshold and the blade clunked loudly back into place. Thankfully, since the telephone pole was at the end of my very last mowing pass, I was finished for the day.

Just after Labor Day, Matt and I took it upon ourselves to tackle hay making on the Hillside Field for a second time.  My experience with farm animals thus far was that second cut hay is like an ice-cream sundae, each green mouthful reminiscent of fresh summertime grass. Bale yields are far greater with a first cut, so coveted second cut bales are reserved for feeding out later in the winter season.  Once you start feeding them to livestock, they will turn up their noses in disgust if you attempt to sneak in an old first cut bale.  Second cut bales are also saved for the end of a cow’s gestation when she needs the extra energy provided by the nutritionally superior hay, and with Pip’s due date around April 1st, we needed to have some on hand.

Since Matt was on a short holiday home from Amsterdam, we needed to maximize our efforts and get this job done in one fell swoop.  With our son Miles working in Boston, and son Alistair and daughter Caroline back at school, and the rest of my extended family back at their own post-summer lives, we were on our own.  Matt committed to several hours to mowing the entire field (I still hadn’t regained the courage to face that damn telephone pole again), and I assumed responsibility for the tedding.  Unfortunately, by this point, AJ’s crowbar repair to the misaligned rotating tines had given out and the rhythmic clanging had resumed.  Hay definitely wasn’t going to dry without spreading it out, so I put on a pair of utility ear protectors and tuned out the racket as best as I could.

In my opinion, September in Vermont is the most glorious month of the year.  The humidity of June and July has passed, and there are far more high-pressure days when the sun shines without a cloud in the sky.  It looked like we were in for a safe three-plus days to get our hay cut, tedded, raked, baled, and picked up, and I felt slightly hopeful that Matt and I just might pull this off.  Unfortunately, I failed to recognize that September is halfway between the summer and winter solstices with every day getting just a bit shorter than the day before. In addition, the morning sun rose from across the Balla Machree valley and hit the Hillside Field early, but by mid-afternoon, when the sun was at its peak drying time, shade would creep over the landscape. By 4:00, the dew was starting to settle, and within an hour the entire field was damp and cool. Furthermore, in the height of the summer, it is frequently 6:00 PM when we’re pulling the last trailer load of hay off the field.  By 6:00 PM in September, it’s nearly dark. 

With the sun not cooperating according to our time schedule, and the tedder machine not willing to make one more clanking pass, we determined that we would have to rake our hay up in bundled rows, let it dry, then re-rake the bundles in the opposite direction so the underside would then be able to dry.  Since I was still milking Pip in the mornings, Matt took on the first round of raking duties.  While I was doing my chores, I knew when Matt started since I could hear the Gator zipping along the field with the rake being pulled behind swishing away.  Sometimes the rake gets tangled up with too much hay, particularly on the corners, so I assumed that was what happened when things suddenly went quiet.  It’s usually a quick fix - jump off the Gator, pull the tangled mass out of the tines, and carry on.  When I finished up my milking and there was still silence, I hesitantly decided to investigate.  The Gator was stopped at the top of the field with a lined-up row of hay behind it, but the rake was curiously in the middle of the field with Matt standing quizzically next to it.  Somehow, during transit from the main barn and the hay field, the cotter pin that holds the hitch pin securely in place so the rake can’t separate from the Gator dislodged and disappeared.  Pressed for time, rather than disconnecting the rake and driving back down to the barn to source another cotter pin, Matt did what many farmers have done many times before him, jury-rig something out of baler twine.  Running a strand of twine through the cotter pin hole on the hitch pin, Matt wrapped it around the Gator hitch several times, tied it off and carried on with his task.  Unfortunately, baler twine is made of sisal, a biodegradable fibrous product that is made from the leaves of an agave plant.  While it is strong enough to hold a bundle of hay in a bale, it was not rugged enough to withstand the torque of the hitch as the Gator and rake lumbered along the very uneven terrain.  It finally gave way and tore, and the hitch ultimately made its way out of the connecting hole.  Soon thereafter, sensing that something was amiss since the Gator seemed curiously zippier, Matt took a glance over his shoulder and realized he had lost his appendage.  Once dislodged, the rake took a free ride, following the terrain downhill until the slope eased, and it clunked to a stop.  We were hopeful that all would be okay and everything would work fine again once we reconnected (after making the trip back to the barn to source another pin).  Unfortunately, something was amiss with the yoke of the rake, and it was no longer lining up correctly to the hitch on the Gator.  Matt postulated that during the free ride, the yoke dug into the ground and flipped itself fully around while the wheels were bouncing over the bumpy turf.  In order to get it to work properly again, somehow, we had to flip it back, but this was impossible without lifting the rake high enough from its back end so there was enough clearance to get under the front end to spin it fully around. 

Matt is a problem solver, adept at coming up with quick fix solutions on the fly, and he had a plan.  After driving back down to the barn to collect the Case tractor, Matt hooked a chain to its front-end lift bucket and connected the other end to the frame on the rake. He then lifted the bucket until the rake was suspended high enough, so that I could then flip the yoke back around to its correct position.  Achieving this maneuver required me to position myself directly underneath the swinging rake.  Constructed of well over 1,000 lbs. of steel, and with the precarious condition of the bucket on the Case (it had a tendency to slip spontaneously), I wasn’t thrilled about this.  I was even less thrilled when Matt had to lift the bucket to its absolute highest point, maxing out the hydraulic lift before the yoke could be rotated.  Moving swiftly, I did what needed to be done and scrambled out of the way.  Surprisingly, once back on the ground and appearing a bit off kilter, the rake nonetheless successfully reconnected to the Gator and worked just as it should.

It ended up taking us five days to finally complete the task of picking up all the hay from that field.  Between the two of us, we raked and raked and raked until the hay was finally dry enough to bale.  Then Matt ran the baling machine with the kicker wagon attached.  As expected, before he had even successfully run the baler over one windrow, a giant plume of untied hay spewed out the back.  Our sunlight was waning.  Matt grumbled as he attempted to adjust the mechanism inside the knotting box, only to be further aggravated when he started everything up again to another explosion of loose hay discharging out the baler.  Thankfully, AJ was still in the picture at that point and answered my distressed cell phone call promptly.  He drove up within minutes, consulted with Matt, made a few adjustments, and we were up and running again. 

When we finally unloaded the last wagonload, with darkness settling in the valley, I collapsed in an exhausted heap, relieved that we were done with the haying for the rest of the season.

Picking up the last bales with the truck.