Over the weekend my husband was able to get a start on the first cutting of hay or should I say grass. With last year being a wet spring and summer, it was challenging to get a good stand of alfalfa started. Instead we ended up with a good stand of various grasses.
Monday he moved the hay home, which was very exciting for our son. He marched himself right out to watch. First Dad put on the hay spear attachment on the front of the tractor.
The hay spear allows the tractor to spear the bale and pick it up so you can easily move it from place to place without losing any.
From this angle you can see how the bale is formed in the baler. As hay is fed into it, belts help wind it around the center until the bale is at the correct size. Then with the push of a button net-wrap surrounds the bale holding it tightly together.
Net wrap allows you to move it several times without hay falling out. We are storing ours next to the barn for our loyal customers, since we don't currently have any cattle.
A bale trailer makes moving hay from the field to the farm a lot easier. Instead of moving them one by one, you can move six home at a time.
After Dad moves the last bale off, Evan goes to investigate the trailer thinking it is a jungle gym. I remember using ours growing up as a balance beam. Evan's a little small to try that, though.
Then Dad backs up to the trailer to hook it up before getting another load. Of course Evan is right there to help.
By lunch time the field is cleared and we have two nice rows of hay.
Crop check: The soybeans are coming along, but with lots of weeds out there. Normally after planting we will spray the field to control the weeds before the beans have a chance to sprout. Then once the beans are large and about to canopy over the ground, we spray a second time to kill any remaining weeds.
This year it rained before we got them sprayed the first time. Once they sprouted you run the risk of breaking their necks with a tractor tire at a fragile stage in development. It looks like they will just get sprayed once this year. Now we are waiting until the beans are larger. Then the bean plant is big enough to canopy over a larger square footage of the dirt. At that point less sunlight makes it harder for new weeds to grow. The down side is the weeds are larger too and harder to kill.
The corn is growing and about a foot tall. The rows look nice and clear of any weeds. Weeds are harmful to crops because the crops spend more time competing for crucial sunlight and moisture. Also, if your field is filled with weeds when you harvest, the grain is filled with weed seed.
Normally corn only gets sprayed once. Like beans we try to spray them before the seed has a chance to sprout. Since corn grows so much quicker and canopies over so much more quickly, once is usually enough.
Blue skies and a green landscape nothing beats the beauty of God's creation.
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