2013 Haying

No, we didn't just finish.  I'm just a little late getting around to posting... this season instead of a field of dreams it was more a field of nightmares.  The hay itself looks good, but getting it down, baled and put up...

First the new to us swather we bought last fall.  Yeah, we pretty much bought a POS.  We knew it wasn't great, it's pretty old.  But it was in our budget and with a little bit of work it should have been fine.  SHOULD have.
Instead it got a few feet and kablowey... the header deck came loose.  The good news is there is a very small chance it is fixable if someone who knows how to weld decently and knows farm equipment can fix it without it costing a fortune she'll get another shot at life.  The better news?  Our neighbour asked if it's still drivable and when we said yes he replied "Well bring it over, pretty sure I can fix it!"

The swathing was done by the same neighbour that cut & baled for us last year.

The square baler worked fine, until we were almost done.  Seriously, we were thisclose and it calved.  Good news though, it's fixable.  In the meantime neighbour that is going to look at fixing the swather came by and baled for us (rounds).

So we ended up with 6 rounds and hundreds of squares... with only Pie & I to put them away.  Once again good neighbours played a role.  My friend/neighbour SD runs a group home and he let us hire one of his guys to help pick and stack bales.  It still felt like forever getting them put up though because we only had a few hours each day before it was time for Pie & I to go to work.
One of the guys from work came to help one day too.  He worked his butt off and wouldn't take a dime, he just came to help because he's never done it before!

In the end it all worked out, with the blessings of good weather, family and good neighbours we have a hay barn filled for the winter :)  I just hope it's not as long as last years!