On Thursday morning my helper friend’s wife came down to work in the flowerbeds. She’s filling in for my lack of helpers. She decided to tackle the South garden I had started.
She had just about finished it when we heard machinery coming down the road.
It was 9AM and the hayman was here and started cutting the front pasture. He said his brother would be along shortly and rake it.
But when his brother showed up he had the baler and none of the fields got raked. There’s a good amount still lying out there, but mostly not thick enough to kill the grass.
The hayman moved quickly on to the middle pasture. There was a problem there as the trees had never been cut up higher along the driveway, and he had a new tractor he didn’t want damaged.
The gate to this pasture is 20’ wide but it’s a sharp angle off the driveway. He tried to pull out the corner post but wasn’t able. I’ll have to fix that later, I expect.
They did succeed in squeezing through with all the tractors.
They quickly had the middle pasture baled up and had moved onto the back 40.
Once the back was cut, one left and brought back the bale wrapper.
They only got 4 bales off the front pasture, which is a good bit less than an acre.
The middle pasture is much closer to an acre and they got 6 off that.
Once the baling was done one left and got the truck and trailer and his dad came with them. They got 17 bales off the back 40.
Then they left to go get a nearby farmer’s bale grabber.
By this time I had gotten the New West garden and the tiny East of Steps garden done.
I had started pulling grass so I could tell where the edge of the garden was. I stopped to go back and count bales on the back 40. I like to know exactly what is leaving the farm.
My helper friend’s wife had hacked the 4 O’Clocks back and cleaned out the rest of the bed in the South garden. I’d hauled out my maps to be able to figure out where stuff was in the mess.
A new map and she started on the South Herb garden by the steps.
She got the white sage and mugwort tied up and we discovered my 2 new turtleheads had died. But we found a relatively good stand of the old turtlehead!
She left and I went back out to the back 40. They got the first truckload on and headed out with it. I’d talked to the hayman about the hay. It’s very poor quality and I asked how long the 27 bales would last. He said 27 days. It will be mixed with silage in a feed mixer so the cows won’t waste it.
He said the 10 bales off the front and middle pastures were better quality and worth $25 each. But the back 40 was very poor and he said those were only worth $15 each. But in this year of drought, some’s better than none and my fields were cut.
They never came back until 3:30 for the last of the hay and I’d been napping on the couch since 1PM. I listened to the last episode of Remedy and made supper.
Then I processed the 90 photos I’d taken off and on all week and got Thursday’s post up. It was to be low 40’s Thursday night, so I got the house closed up tight and the shades pulled. It stayed warm all night inside.
Friday my helper friend will be here and do the foliar and some shopping. I hope he has time to grate 4½ cups of zucchini as I would like to make zucchini bread for the freezer.