Weapons of Mass Hay Making

That there is the Big Ole Tractor that hauls the hay baler. So guess what I've been doing this week?? Yaa der making hay! Whilst y'all were watching tv and drinking beer, I was raking hay and drinking beer. I think I win in the "fun" department.

Confidential to MooneyBat: solidarity sister. Hay making is hard work!

Anyhoo, the festivities started on Saturday when the hay (alfafa) got mowed. It needed 2 days to dry so on Monday afternoon I was out on the Kubota raking it.


Here's a photo of the cute lil Kubota. I'd just finished raking and aren't those the nicest rows o hay you ever saw? (Say yes, dammit!)

The rake throws hay out the left side only so I did a whole lot of clockwise, then counterclockwise circles. It wasn't boring at all, not with Cooper in my lap (he insisted on riding along) and the ear protection/radio I had. The one problem with that was the ear phones only picked up Christian stations or *really* old rock stations that I've never knew existed in Madison. So it was either "depend on Jesus, he's the only one who loves you" or some Van Halen tune I've blocked to survive puberty.


Here's another shot of the field and it's tidy rows. Nothing like a tidy row of alfafa.

So last night (Tuesday) was bale like crazy before it rained night. Neighbor Mike was in the BF Tractor and I was in the LF tractor, hauling the hay wagon over to my barn to unload. I pulled into the barn and started throwing hay down, only to quickly realize that these haybales were somewhere in the range of 60# a piece. (um, that's kinda heavy).

After an hour of tossing I looked up and saw that I had about 140 bales to go and called for back up. That would be Joe. We got it done and I hauled the wagon back just in time for the rain to start. The rain felt great seeing as I was a sweaty, disgusting, unladylike mess when it hit.

But, nothing like a barn full of fresh hay. That makes a farmer happy.
toodles.

My slow internet

So it turns out that my house guest for the summer was downloading a lot of music and videos, which caused my internet provide to put an "Abuse Alert" on my account. I've been quarantined!!

I will try to put another post with photos on line tonight, maybe at 9pm because at 8 in the morning it's slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

rats. What's a farm blooger to do? Oops. I mean blogger.
r

Around the Farm

I took my camera out on the rounds yesterday just to chronicle a typical day at Sunny Hill.

A day starts with a cup or two of coffee. Here I had just gotten up from the laptop to make another cup and came back to find you-know-who in my chair. You just know he's saying "move your feet lose your seat, sucka!"


Before I go outside I wanted to post a pic of Barbara working on the panel murals. These are going in the cabinets under the tv and the four panels together tell the Sunny Hill story. Here she is working on the right hand panel, and Willow is going over a stone wall with Lady B riding side saddle. Too cool! She's doing them in a primitive style but each animal looks like the real one. Stay tuned for the completed photo.

So after I've had a cup or two of coffee I head over to the barn.

We had more rain last week and since the water table is about 2cm below the surface it doesn't take much for the pond to return. Sigh....just a week ago I was mowing this area then we got 2" of rain last Friday.

alrighty, I was going to post photos of the inside of the barn but my satellite is on a sabbatical and won't let me upload any more pics. Will try again tomorrow.
toodles.
b

My Left (purple) Foot and other Events

Here's a shot of what is just one happening in an eventful week. That's the arena with the first dump truck of sand dropped on it and Coopy digging holes in the sand. It took 5 more truckloads to get it to 2" and an hour with the skid loader to spread it around. All made more difficult because my left foot was out of commission. And why is that, rebecca?

It's Gabby's fault. She conned me into letting her go outside at 11:30 pm (I thought it was about 8:30). I was half asleep going down the stairs and missed the last step, rolled over on my foot and landed ass over teakettle---is that not a great old cliche?--and knew I'd sprained a few things. Now the only reason Gabby has to go out in the middle of the night is to chase some animal walking through the yard. Turns out Gabby had run down a fox. Poor Mr. Fox but he was probably sniffing at the chickens anyway.

So the next day my foot was not looking or working well. In case you ever wondered what role your toes play in human engineering they improve walking balance, A LOT. They look kind of useless but trust me, they are important.

Round up this week: wine rack and upper cabinets built, arena sand in, new wiring in house ($$owch$$), and living room mauve/maroon bad Fung Shui job going away.
Here's a photo of the painting in progress.
First is the photo of the gross mauve going away, replaced with a saddle brown. Yum. Note the essential bottle of wine near the ladder. That helps keep your lines straight.

Time to get some chores done. More kitchen transformation pics soon!