With all the rain we weren’t able to start hay until the first week in July.  Ken spent Tuesday and Wednesday mowing and raking.  We baled on Thursday night after work.  A few months ago Ken bought an extender for the baler that would allow us to hook a hayrack to the baler so that he wouldn’t have to walk across the field loading the pickup or low trailer.  That left me to do the baling.  It was a little intimidating at first.  I only drive the tractor about once a year and now I’m pulling the baler and the hayrack with Ken on it.  At first I made big loops at the end of one rowing and heading to another.  Ken said, cut it shorter, the baler will follow right behind you.  So before too long I had enough confidence to make a turn from one row to the very next row.  I think we looked like a long train . . . that moved very slowly. Since we took Friday the 4th off, we were hoping the finish up on Saturday, but the day started out rainy.  Thankfully the sun came out and the wind blew later that day so the hay could dry out.  As soon as we got home from Church on Sunday we headed out to do more hay and, of course, that’s the day it was 95.  We have both decided that we may not be able to do this much longer. The new contraption that Ken bought for the baler will help for awhile, but the unloading in the heat really takes a toll.We’ll just take it a year at a time.

I wasn’t sure I could pull the hay trailer right up to the hay shed, so Ken would do that part.

Now that we are all done with the hay, we have over 400 bales and we only need about 300 to get us through the winter. Hopefully that will mean an easier year next year.

We brought in the last bales on Monday night. There still a couple of windrows out there, but we will probably just take it up with pitchforks and load it into the pickup to get it off the grass that is trying to grow.