Making Hay From Start to Finish (with just a couple problems along the way 😅)

We are hay today. So down here at the pond right now, Papa has already mowed all the hay around the pond, so I'm going to show that to you guys. There is a lot of it. So it's some, the grass was super tall, got quite a bit of hay, and it's very thick. You can see here, all this, lots of hay. This is going to be all baled up into round bales, and we need to get it all completely dried out. So we're gonna get it mowed. That's what he's working on now. He moved on to the next spot, and then we will get it, we're going to ted it so it's all spread out. Then it'll be raked up, and then finally after it's all dried out, we will bale it. But when the grass is this thick, there's a lot of moisture in here. We need to make sure that it gets dried out all the way through. So this is what we are looking like right now. He just finished mowing all the hay down here. You can see there's a lot of it all the way around the pond, and now he's going to go get all the rest of the hay mowed, and then we will just be letting it dry. We're going to have a great week for making hay though. Today's Friday. Tomorrow it's supposed to be almost 90. It's going to be 80 today, and it's supposed to be in like upper 80s the next week or so. So it's going to be great for drying all this hay out. It has been like staying extra cool lately. Like throughout the day I'll even want a jacket, but it's switching now, and it's going to be getting hot, and summer is going to be on its way. The tedder takes it from looking like this, where it's all bunched up in this tight pile, and then if you look under here, underneath it, still pretty green, and that can't get dried out. So the tedder just spreads it all out to where it's a nice thin layer, mixes that green stuff up the top, and then it can all dry out nicely. You can see what it leaves behind is just this nice super thin layer of hay spread out over the whole area. Then after this dries completely out, we'll go back through with a rake, and rake it up into windrows to be baled. Good morning everybody! We are down here raking hay today. So now that the hay has been tetted and it's all dried out, we are down here to rake it up into nice big windrows to get ready to bale it later on today. This is actually a new rake that we got. If you guys remember, if you've been following along, the old rake we had, it was a manual fold and unfold. So usually when Papa was raking, I had to go around and just follow him around to help him fold it and unfold it. So this one is hydraulic, so this is our first year. We got it just earlier this year, and it's been so nice. So I now don't have to go around and help Papa unfold it at all every time he moves to a different spot, which is very nice, and it's doing a very good job as you can see. So I will get a little bit of footage of the rake going. It's windy, so I will block the wind. Look under here. That's not supposed to be that way. That's not supposed to be that way, and over there. Go around and look at the front. Don't look underneath it, Emma. Right here. Right in there. Yeah, that's not supposed to be that way. We'll, I'll talk in here. Lighting's okay. The wind's not bad. 90% of farming is fixing. And every time, and I just never really get things fixed. There's always something. Then you have the people that's just more money than, more money than anything else. I just say it that way. Just constantly doing new and paying other people to fix. Still a lot of fixing, it's just they're giving it to somebody else to fix. But anyways, we just showed you the plow truck. All that truck gets used for is pushing a snow plow, and it's an old truck. We knew it was old then. You see, it's wore out. And I'm not going to get preachy, don't skip. Even though I might give some words of wisdom here, and I might relate to how I think of things. But it's words of wisdom for everybody, and I'm not going to be shoving religion down your throat. I will say this, everything gets old. And there is a Bible verse that says, lay up treasures in heaven where moth and rust doesn't corrupt. And that's so true. I went and got a double twine arm for my baler, because our old baler is a single line twine arm. And what a twine arm is, is it goes across and then it comes back. So your twine arm goes like this, and then it comes back really slow. And as it's coming back, the bale and the baler is turning, and they're pulling string into the baler, wrapping that bale. Well, when you have one, you have to sit there for so long and wait. Two, you sit there half the time, literally half the time, because you have two twine arms, so you can let the twine arm go twice as fast and put the same amount of twine on. So instead of going back super slow, it goes over and then it comes back medium slow. And so you're sitting there half the time, it's twice as fast. I went down to Colfax and got that off of a baler. They had four or five balers down there. And a baler that's like 10 years newer than our baler. But they're wore out. They were used harder and worse and not maintained. And like I said, 90% of farming is fixing stuff. You either fix it after it breaks or you fix it before it breaks. So we're just constantly maintaining. And yeah, you change tires or you're going to be fixing flats. You lubricate it or you're going to be fixing bearings. You're doing maintenance to keep it from breaking or you're fixing it after it breaks. It's just maintenance and repair is both your fixing stuff. Pre-fixing or post-fixing, it's fixing it. And you see, rust will get you. There's one thing that gets everybody and that's time. I don't care what it is, time will get you. And I see so many people who work so hard to get so much and then they figure it out too late that time is going to get them too. So if I had words of wisdom, keep that in mind. And of course, I think we're all going to die. Well, we are. But I think we're all going to stand before God. And I try to get people to have a relationship with God. And I think that's only through Jesus Christ before you meet God. And that just seems like common sense to me that you would want to know the fellow before you meet him. And the more you get to know him, the more fear and love you'd have. But still, that's how I try to encourage people is to consider what's going to happen after they die and that they have a soul. And maybe you have and maybe you don't care. Maybe you don't think you have a soul. I'd have more respect for you than I would somebody who just doesn't want to think about it. But time chews everything up and it'll get you. So I'm constantly just see the bottom of that pick up. And if it's not one thing, it's two others that's broken. It can wear you down, but you just know. You know, I was just laughing. Jocelyn had her hoof trimming stand for the horse. Brought it up here yesterday welding. And this thing is constantly in a state of disorganization on different projects and wearing out and just getting old. So even me and you see my dad and everybody, everything gets old. So where are you going to put your value? I think one of the ways I told you 90% of farming is fixing. And I think to myself, how how in the world do people make it farming? Because and I'll tell you how is you get some paid for ground. And if you can get some ground in this, I don't know that a fella could start in it now. But if you get some ground and you can manage to hang on to it for 30 years without that bubble busting, that's the only way you really can make it. And you've got guys who have made it made it because they had ground from the 70s and 80s and 90s. And the longer you can hang on to it, the more it appreciates in value. And the more you can return off of that. So you're getting rent off of these guys that bought ground for $300 an acre. They're now it's renting out $300 an acre a year. So there's a ground that I think is going to come up for sale over here very soon. And we're looking at probably two, two and a half million. And there's no way of cash flow who's buying that. I don't know. Not me. I can't. You got to make money off of it to make it go. Why would I want to suck my children into that kind of debt? So we're very blessed and thankful for what we have. And if we have any more, it's only going to be by the grace of God because God gives it to us. But then again, we look at everything as well. God gives us what he wants us to take care of. And that's one reason I don't have a bad attitude. And I don't get discouraged and depressed fix much. I get over it fixing stuff because we're working for the Lord ultimately. And everything I do is just as if I'm God's employee and he gets to set the pay. And just what I say all the time is working for the Lord don't pay much. But retirement plan is out of this world. And I hope everybody, even if you don't have an attitude that you're going to be working for the Lord and you don't care about God, the truth still remains that you're going to get old and die. What's your life going to amount to? And what have you what have you done with it? So I hope everybody really considers that even, you know, maybe today, tomorrow going forward is make your life mean something. And I hope that includes the Lord. All the hay has been raked up. So we are working on getting it baled up now. Dad has been down here baling. Looks like we're having a few problems, though. So that's not great. But you can see he's got some done already. And I just got back from a lunch break. We were actually having a few issues with the baler because we put a new twine arm on it. That's what ties the string on the bales. And it's a double twine arm, I believe. So we put that on the other day. And then we were having to get all the air out of the lines. And we got all the air out of the lines. And the hydraulic pump wouldn't prime and all of that. So anyways, it was a bit of a process to get it all actually ready to go this morning. We had to work on it for quite a while. But it's running now. It's been running good. I think he's plugged up a little bit here. So he's going to get that unplugged. I'm going to get a flag to put on that bale because he said it started wrapping a little bit early. So there's a little bit of string inside of it. So I'm going to go get a flag. Oh, got a whole nice dash of them. Okay, there we go. There we go. I came down to get baler footage. And I have not been successful in getting baler footage yet. But I am getting ready to head back up for my second errand. Because he needs a couple wrenches, so. Got the wrenches. I'm gonna head back down to the pond. Yes, sir. It might be working. Okay, I just had to tighten something up. So we got it. And I don't think anything actually sheared. It must have just gotten stuck. I honestly don't know. But it's working now. So we're not going to question it too much. I'm going to start it back up and see what happens. Dad's getting them baled up. Papa is down here to start carrying the bales out of the field. Right as dad gets them baled up. Okay, things seem to be going well for now. We'll just kind of hope it stays that way. Papa's pulling the bales out. Dad's baling them up. I'm just going to be on standby up here. If anything goes wrong, if they need anything, they can call and we'll go help them out. Alrighty, y'all. It is now a different day. But I wanted to come in here and give you guys a little update. Kind of wrap the video up and give y'all the official ending to the hay baling. So we got all the hay baled up and the big round bales. We did not have any more problems, which was great. And the baler did well. So just had a few little issues there. Again, with that twine arm and getting that replaced and then everything finished up after that was a little bit of a challenge. But we got it done and then the baler plugged up once or twice. But overall, things did not go too badly and we got all the hay baled up. So really, we can't complain too much and we're glad to have it done. So that is going to be it for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. It was kind of a little bit of a different style video, I feel like. Normally, I'll just kind of vlog throughout a day and stuff. But this was kind of more focused on a specific thing, which was hay making and kind of showing you guys the whole process of that. So I hope this video was still enjoyable and wasn't too boring for you. But either way, we will have another video out pretty soon. So I hope y'all are looking forward to that. That is going to be it for today. Thank you guys so much for watching. I love reading all of your guys' comments and hearing what you like to see and all of that. So thank you for every bit of your support. I really do appreciate it. That is going to be it for this video. Thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you next time.