Once upon a time , a long time ago ( well — really not that long ago),farmers develop haywithout the modernistic miracles of lawn mower / conditioner and hay balers . It might seem unvoiced to imagine nowadays , but there was a time when farmers cumulate dried hay by thepitchfork , heaping it onto wagons before storing it at large in haystack or in barn .
The design of the robotic hay baler rush along up the outgrowth and eliminated a lot of manual Labor Department . But you know what ? Gathering dried hay by hired hand and storing it loose is still a viable scheme in the absence seizure of modern equipment .
I learned this during a recent stretch of hay yield .
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Machinery Can (& Often Does) Fail
It was supposed to be a routine little mission , capitalizing on a three - day cheery stretch to produce approximately 220 small straight Basel . Things started off on a fine distinction . The lawn mower / conditioner did its line of work . The hay rake gathered the informal hay into windrows . And the square hay baler depart churning out Basle .
dead , without word of advice , there was a tremendous clash and clanking . Something ( we still have n’t nail what ) make the complicated innards of the hay baler to crumple upon themselves . A service door flung open , spraying broken portion out the back in a cloud of hay dust .
The loss of the hay baler was a setback . But we were ready with a backup hay baler .
We chop-chop hooked it up , and the second baler produced exactly 14 Bale before getting sidelined with a shear pin takings . Restoring the shear pin ( and tightening a nut on the flywheel that somehow worked loose ) read far longer than it should have . By recent afternoon , though , we were back on caterpillar tread .
Another Baler Breakdown
Unfortunately , our baler issues were n’t over . While the backup baler successfully baled up much of the hay , there was still a meaningful amount on the flat coat when a bound smash on the knotter . This caused bales to burst forth undo from the back of the auto .
The knotter jaw up a messy tangle of twine .
By this clip we were run out of daylight . We called it a night and regroup the next day . With afternoon rain in the forecast and both balers in varying country of disrepair , we elected to garner the remaining hay the old - fashioned direction : by hand .
show more : Upgrade your hay wagon for easy utilization !
By Hand?!
That ’s right . arm with pitchfork and three empty wagons , four of us ventured onward and begin best up as much hay as we could . We used the window of dry clock time between the departure of dew and the arrival of rain . The fact the hay was gathered in fluffy windrows made the pickup quicker and easier than pucker unraked hay would have been .
In the close , a downpour struck before we could deliver all the hay . But we got a bang-up deal under back before the pelting and study the day a success .
I was impressed with how cursorily could gather hay by rake the windrows into cumulation with pitchforks and hoisting giant armloads onto the Wain . To load as much loose hay as potential , we compressed the hay using a large and heavy piece of plywood .
later on , with the assistant of a neighbour , we were able to fix and untangle the knotter on our backup baler . We should n’t have to gather hay by deal again anytime soon . But it ’s respectable to do it pitchforks , wagons and muscles can successfully step in if needed , just as they did with geometrical regularity in the not - too - remote past .
