Sunday, August 6.
Aug. 6th, 2023 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
This stretch of hot, dry weather is giving farmers the opportunity to cut hay.
I got up today, and there was a text from one of our hay guys, saying "hay is ready today if you can come get it out of the field".
Dear lord. NO NOTICE at all.
This was the guy who had said that he wouldn't have hay available, so I wasn't ready for him.
He has the BEST grass hay I've ever seen, is reasonably priced IF I can go pick it myself (otherwise his price goes up if he picks it and puts it in his shed).
Every year so far, though, he has just given us ZERO notice, and I/we have to drop everything we thought we were going to do to go get it.
So. Since I had let my guard down and thought he wasn't offering hay this year, the trailer that I did have cleared off and hitched to the truck in readiness of his text, was sitting un-hitched from the truck and had a full, 1200 pound cube of cedar mulch on it.
Like a madwoman, I laid down sheets of cardboard and unloaded the cedar mulch manually, having to shovel the whole thing off. If you've ever moved compressed mulch, it is not heavy so much, as you almost have to chip it apart first to even get it loose enough to shovel. It is so packed that it's almost like particle board, and if you try to just stick a shovel into it, it bounces off. I had to use a fork to loosen off a chunk, which would then dissolve into chips that fell through the tines. So it was fork, shovel, fork, shovel. A tremendous pain.
Then, I had a hell of a time backing the truck up to the hitch on my own, because usually you have someone standing there telling you to go a little to the left, etc. I had to get out and correct myself about twenty times to get close enough that I could kind of pull the trailer over onto the ball.
After all that, loading the bales itself wasn't that bad. It was work, but not frustrating like unloading the mulch and trying to hitch the trailer.
I got 41 bales today, which is pretty good, and hopefully I can get that many tomorrow, and that will likely be enough of the square bales. These bales are mostly for our very old mare who kind of needs finer grass hay to maintain weight. Her teeth aren't great.
I came home and unloaded the bales into our barn, let everyone out for a while, and also had to reinforce the goat creep again, because the goats and ponies are going nuts from the mosquitoes and are rubbing against it constantly, loosening the boards.
It was one heck of a day, but I am grateful to be strong enough to do it, and that I can drive and use the trailer.
I learned about the "swing kids" counterculture in Germany during the 1940's. They were heavily targeted by the Nazi regime because of their independent view, and American influence.
I did know about this a bit from the movie "Swing Kids", which was great, and this adds more depth to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingjugend
This stretch of hot, dry weather is giving farmers the opportunity to cut hay.
I got up today, and there was a text from one of our hay guys, saying "hay is ready today if you can come get it out of the field".
Dear lord. NO NOTICE at all.
This was the guy who had said that he wouldn't have hay available, so I wasn't ready for him.
He has the BEST grass hay I've ever seen, is reasonably priced IF I can go pick it myself (otherwise his price goes up if he picks it and puts it in his shed).
Every year so far, though, he has just given us ZERO notice, and I/we have to drop everything we thought we were going to do to go get it.
So. Since I had let my guard down and thought he wasn't offering hay this year, the trailer that I did have cleared off and hitched to the truck in readiness of his text, was sitting un-hitched from the truck and had a full, 1200 pound cube of cedar mulch on it.
Like a madwoman, I laid down sheets of cardboard and unloaded the cedar mulch manually, having to shovel the whole thing off. If you've ever moved compressed mulch, it is not heavy so much, as you almost have to chip it apart first to even get it loose enough to shovel. It is so packed that it's almost like particle board, and if you try to just stick a shovel into it, it bounces off. I had to use a fork to loosen off a chunk, which would then dissolve into chips that fell through the tines. So it was fork, shovel, fork, shovel. A tremendous pain.
Then, I had a hell of a time backing the truck up to the hitch on my own, because usually you have someone standing there telling you to go a little to the left, etc. I had to get out and correct myself about twenty times to get close enough that I could kind of pull the trailer over onto the ball.
After all that, loading the bales itself wasn't that bad. It was work, but not frustrating like unloading the mulch and trying to hitch the trailer.
I got 41 bales today, which is pretty good, and hopefully I can get that many tomorrow, and that will likely be enough of the square bales. These bales are mostly for our very old mare who kind of needs finer grass hay to maintain weight. Her teeth aren't great.
I came home and unloaded the bales into our barn, let everyone out for a while, and also had to reinforce the goat creep again, because the goats and ponies are going nuts from the mosquitoes and are rubbing against it constantly, loosening the boards.
It was one heck of a day, but I am grateful to be strong enough to do it, and that I can drive and use the trailer.
I learned about the "swing kids" counterculture in Germany during the 1940's. They were heavily targeted by the Nazi regime because of their independent view, and American influence.
I did know about this a bit from the movie "Swing Kids", which was great, and this adds more depth to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingjugend
no subject
Date: 2023-08-07 04:08 pm (UTC)What's a goat creep? That's quite a visual image for one who has no idea what it is!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-07 08:41 pm (UTC)A creep can be used for foals, or calves, or anything. It's when you have smaller animals housed with larger ones (in my case, the goats are housed with the ponies) and you need to give them extra feed or minerals that the larger animals don't need/shouldn't have.
The goats need goat specific minerals, and the ponies shouldn't have it, and they would gobble it all down if they got the chance. The creep is just some boards I put up across a corner of their pen that is set up to let the goats crawl through it, but not the ponies.
In other situations, a creep is often a little shed that also only allows the smaller animals access.
Right now, with the mosquitoes being so bad, all of the animal are rubbing against the boards a lot, and I've been having to put in extra screws etc. to keep it from collapsing. There is a proper scratching post, but that mustn't be good enough.