Manny, oh manny

Well, after the all Star Break, most Red Sox fans can anticipate the beginning of the end.  Time to put the lawn chairs back in the garage.

Let me clarify.  Red Sox fans are those who were fans before the Sox won a world series this century.  Not the come this side of the fence because the Sox actually won the big one.  What was the big one?  The series where the Sox came from behind to beat the Yankess for the for the league championship.  The World Series was icing on the cake.  I cried and like most real Sox fans, walked around in a daze for a couple of days.

Manny annoyed me then, especially his droopy pants.  But I forgave his insolence because he was a stranger in a strange land. Now it seems as if his arrogance has caught up with him.   $$Too Manny Problems $$$ said a sign at Fenway.

I agree.  Manny you can just be Manny somewhere else.  You have worn out your welcome.  I would like to see a trade to someone who has good sportsmanship, not an over inflated ego.

make hay while the sun shines

Summer is a busy time around the farm.

I had been gone from Davis Hill for a while and my return has been met with a mountain of paperwork, filing and weeding of the garden. Jo and I planted early and the peas and beans are ready for harvest. The plan was to pick after getting some billing out. The boys had a different plan.

Good weather means making hay. Cut, bale, haul and stack. The farm uses round bales that are stacked up like giant marshmellows by the main barn and then coded by field location. The hay is not dried out like the square bales I use, these are baled soon after the hay is cut and raked into rows. These bales are 1000 pounds and stand several feet high and several feet deep. Machines are needed to move, wrap and stack them.

Charlie likes to use his John Deere for cutting and baling. Tom uses the International Harvester 4245 with the clam shell arms for picking up the bales and putting them onto the hay wagon. There are two different types of wagons, the traditional wooden wagon is a bit scary to haul. It May-Maws behind the truck, that is how Tom and Joe say bob and weave. I like the new red metal wagon made exactly for the round bales and I like towing it behind Charlie’s Ford F250 vs. Tom;s Dodge 1500. ( I have a dodge 1500 truck too, but towing a hay wagon with 5-6 tons is a real load )

The boys call on the cell phone back to the farm to ask for the wagons. They drive the tractors over to the fields across town, stranding themselves there. We have lunch and drink ready for them so they don’t have to shop work. Yesterday it was mid afternoon when it was time to fetch the bales and bring them to the farm. Once the bales are retrieved, they then need to be wrapped in plastic and stacked.

The machine for wrapping does one bale at a time and it spins the bale while it turns it around to be wrapped. The end result is a bale that will cure over a couple of weeks. The bales are stacked outside the barn and as long as the plastic covering isn’t torn, the hay will keep through the winter. Air it the main factor in rotting hay.

After all the bales are brought back to the farm the wrapping takes a good while. There were 4 wagon loads harvested from the field yesterday, I think the count is somewhere in the low 50’s. I worked the wrapper, while Tom moved the bales to the machine, then once wrapped and kicked off, he stacked them up.

The cows have a diet of hay mixed with grain and corn silage. My sheep have a diet of hay, grain, barely and sweet oats. It takes 15 adult sheep one week to eat a round bale. The farm grinds up one bale a day at each feeding and adds the other feed. So two bales a day for 100 head of milking cows. Plus you gotta have the machinery to move the feed.

I didn’t pick any peas or beans yesterday. Today it is raining, so I will do chores, then head to the farm and get some billing out. No making hay today. I will pick peas and beans instead.