Results May Vary

Howdy folks, I just got back home from a mini vacation with the wife and some high school friends. Went to Deadwood, did a little gambling, went to an Ian Muncy concert, it's pretty dang good. It's time to bale, dad's raking. We're gonna go meet him in the field with the baler. Dad's getting pretty close to done working on this. Look at this, oh wow. There's some hay out here. Check that out. That's the biggest row we've had in years. Jeepers creepers. So I've been instructed to start on this north side because as dad worked on that south side this way, the rows started getting so big, we started plugging. The plan is to do the stuff that works and then if it gets that bad, we might start raking with half the rake. Last time we did that was in 2019. We couldn't put two wind rows together because they just get so dang big. We'd plug stuff, good problem to have. Big ole hay. Couple bales with ripped net wrap on the side. We might have some net wrap rippin' or wrappin' up on a roller. This other roller's got some. This'll be a moment. Pretty much all the way down. Looks like that. Once you get some wrapped on there, this stuff will grab on the wrap on the next bale. There was some corn stalks wrapped in some of that net wrap we were cutting off, so that's from last fall. That it was already building up then, so should've cleaned it off during the off season. All right. You have trouble raking, too? Yeah, I started plugging. Oh, well, now you're gonna have trouble the rest of the way, then. Yeah. I went from that end till it was bad. Then I started this way till it was bad. If it keeps sucking, I'll have to rake with one side. All right, so we spent about 20, 30 minutes gettin' that plug out. Or it wasn't a plug, but wrapped net wrap. So for those of you that don't know, Deadwood, there's a whole lot of gamblin'. It's a fun place to hang out for a weekend. But with gambling, the odds are not in your favor. But I'm sure you're curious to see how I did yesterday. In about 30 minutes, I turned at the blackjack table $100 into zero. So then I threw 60 more bucks at it, and I turned $60 into $190 back in the green. So then I went over to the roulette table, and I turned $70 into zero dollars. So that wasn't good. And then I thought, shoot, might as well play some slots, and we turned 20 bucks into 77. So I ended up all right, which means somebody else lost. Because that's how the casino gets paid. Come take a look at this. See, there's a strip of hay right here and right here that's not gettin' into the balers because the windrow's gettin' so dang wide that the pickup isn't able to get that full width. So although I'm not pluggin' too bad, you know, it's once or twice maybe down a pass, I think it'd be better, we'd get more hay. It'd take a little bit longer, but we'd get more hay is if I just flipped one row and didn't converge two together. Because that just, big chunks fall out, and I mean, there's no way dad's gonna be able to pick all that up. So what we do, there's this little stop right here. Pull that back, put the pin in here. All right, so now when I put this in float, this side will stay up, the other side will drop down. That's still a good size windrow with just one pass. Would you allow me to go home with that and bring that loader back to grab that broken bale and run the baler for a minute? Yeah, as long as it runs good for me. We'll go in tenths until the windrow's real heavy and then go down to ninth gear. Dad's back with a tractor, he picked up a broken bale. We're gonna switch off with him. And next thing is, we'll be breaking Jeff's alfalfa field. We're gonna start on Uncle Jeff's alfalfa here. It's pretty incredible how green the alfalfa's getting already. It's growing right back up. Dad finished up that field and made 111 bales, so that's about 3.7 bales to the acre. That's pretty dang good. Also, the first cutting of alfalfa on the big field, he got, I think, 188. So we have dang near 300 bales sitting on the ground right now. And it's pretty soon gonna be about, well, I assume we'll get two and a half bales an acre. We might make another 40 to 50 bales over here. And it's got some damp to it. That's gonna take a few hours to dry before Dad can bale. So we got that alfalfa raked up. It's gonna take a while for that to dry. But we do have one more spot of grass that's ready to rake and then bale. And it's a small area. It's perfect size for us to dial this machine in, get it set and ready, so we know if we have an issue with our other baler, or if we have a bunch to bale, and rain's coming and we want two balers going, we'll know that this machine is ready. So we're gonna run to one pasture, spray some weeds, got this all loaded up. Actually, where I was just cutting hay. We made one pass through there, but we still see quite a bit of thistle, so take care of that. Then after that, get some lunch, and hop in the wind rower. We got 30 acres of grass that we're gonna cut, lay down, and then eventually start doing some baling. Holy smokes, look at this thistle. That thing is about five times, well, this is a normal looking one. Look how thick that dude is. That's a thick boy. You can see Dad got these last week. Man, look at that. The grass is growing, and so are the weeds, that's for sure. Dad headed down the road, he's baling that alfalfa, and we have 30 acres of grass that we're gonna cut. Shouldn't take more than two hours. I got one adjustment I wanna make. Simple thing, but it should make it so the wind rows aren't as big, and we're able to rake them together. So we got a 16 foot wide head here, and my display knows that because I typed it in. And so I'm gonna change this tracking width to 13 feet. And what that's gonna do is change how wide we cut. So we'll be taking in about 20% less crop. Now, it's gonna make it so I have to make a couple more passes. I'm not gonna be cutting as many acres per hour. But hopefully, we won't have what we did earlier in the video, the wind rows plugging up the rake, and then it's so wide that the baler can't pick it up from one side to the other. So we're gonna be cutting about 20% less, so hopefully that sorts that issue out. Good issue to have, that means we get a whole lot of hay. Right next to us is our big alfalfa field, 70 acres. Dad got it baled up a couple days ago. I think he said 188 bales out there. Best cutting in five years. Happened last time we were cutting, the belt started slipping. We must have some hay wrapped up again. Dad just got done with the alfalfa. There was 51 bales, 51. I think last year, one of those cuttings, we got like 12, 17, 15. But 51, that's, well, is that not just about the same amount in the first cutting as it was in all three cuttings last year? Wow, that's incredible. So I got the good baler, and Dad's bringing the old one. We got that little bit of grass that we raked up earlier. Just wanna make sure that that thing will work when we need it to. You know, we don't wanna get in a situation where there's, you know, say a storm's coming, we need two balers going, and all of a sudden, we're like, oh, this thing's not ready to go yet, so. So he's gonna hit the smallest rows, because some of these big suckers are a lot for that guy to handle. Well, he's going. I think he's wrapping. I don't know, he's been stopped there for a while, so I'm not sure. I made four bales. Something's going wrong, hasn't moved in a couple minutes. But that's what this day is for, trying around. Did your toy break? We'll park it in the trees, and we'll never speak of it again. Oh my. No. I think it's a tractor issue, the hydraulics don't hold the locks down on the back door, and it popped open, so now I can't, I can't even start it back up again, because the bale won't turn inside there. Yeah. So I was gonna switch the hydraulics around, and see if the other valve doesn't leak, but now I got a popped open door, and the bale's stuck in there. He made a bale. It's just not wrapped or nothing. So we didn't get far. This baler made 25 bales, and the other one piled up enough for maybe a bale, but we did exactly what we wanted to do, see if the baler would work. The answer right now is not yet. Little bugger. Oh, why you wet under there? You're a dirty little guy. Jeez, look at this. We did it all, folks. We raked, we baled, we cut Dad's hauling hay, and tomorrow we have a few hundred bales that we're gonna try to move. There's something on my face. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching, love to see you next time. Have a good one. Ooh! Goal! Whoa, whoa!