'Tis The Season!

For haying!!

The junior hay hand...

Second in command...

And the leader of the pack!

Me and my "hay hands" went to my Ol' Pal Gary's and got our round bales.  Gary is an animal lover and lets me let my dogs out to run while he loads my rented trailer...or my truck or whatever I've brought to load.

He thinks Seven is just the funniest dog he's ever seen.  She put on a show for him, climbing any bale she could.  That included the bales on the trailer....

When we were tying off our load, she tried to get on top... but missed and decided that maybe she didn't need to be up that high...and went and found one on the ground to hop on top of!

Gary grew up in Grangeville Idaho, where his family ranched and farmed.  He's done a lot since those days...including logging out of my home town of Weippe Idaho.  We know a few of the same families...although he knows the Grandparents and I know the Grand kids, it's all kind of the same...

Small town stuff I guess!

At any rate I love chatting with this old boy.  He is down right funny and loves to talk about when he was a kid...

And quite honestly, it's sad how complicated kid's lives have gotten.

Even when you compare my childhood to his, things were so very different...

This hay field is below his house.

I took two trailer loads of 14 bales out of here.  I would have taken more, but I wanted to put it in the barn and haven't gotten my small squares yet, so this is all I dared get.

And then there was the heat.  Good grief.  I like, heck I love the 80 degree temps, but when it's in the mid 90's...that's just too much for me!  By the time we got one trailer emptied and the next one loaded and home, I was all but done in...and we don't even buck these bales!  :0)

I am going to have to get a few more bale from him before fall to make it through winter...but I'll worry about that in September.  By then I should have gotten my small squares in and will work with what I have...

I wouldn't be in such a hurry if it weren't for the fact that Gary lost some hay to the crazy rainstorms we had. When I say some, I am understating the loss quite a bit, he estimates his loss to be nearly 40 tons.  He lost his farm help this year, so he was cutting a few big fields that were close to each other, then turning them, then baling them.  He estimated he was about 6 hours behind the rain...and once it started, we had three days of hard rain.  He said he turned it and then more rain would come, it would start to warm up and he'd turn it again, and then more rain...  He told me he had turned it four times and the stuff had started turning as black as the tires on his tractor when he just gave up on doing anything with it.  He had good horse hay that ended up being feeder hay... He was lucky in that his neighbor that runs a couple hundred head of cattle asked him about buying it...  So Gary got out his silage baler and baled the hay for him.  They share a fence line so it was as easy as opening a gate and the neighbor drove his own rigging in and loaded it up and hauled it away.  That got it out of Gary's way and saved him the trouble of trying to off load it.  He swears that cows LOVE molded hay, and that it's good for them...

My square bale guys dragging his feet with my grass alfalfa mix...  Too much more time elapsing and I may just get off my lazy butt and call around and just haul home a ton at a time until I've got what I think I need...

I'll be calling him again at the beginning of next week.  Right now the only thing he's got going for him is that I am lazy and don't want to deal with it myself...but you never know when I'll get a burst of energy and get something done!!  :0)

My rented hay hauler.  It worked out so well!!

Have I mentioned lately that I love my truck??? :0)

Full load!!

What my husband got to do for his birthday!  This poor fella must really love me!!

When you have a hydraulic spoon...you have to improvise some times.  

The rear bale was our counterbalance...and then later dinner for the kids!

Happy Haying season everyone!!  Hahaaa!!