Fixing

Thurs. - Joe was here this morning and started milking with Bruce and then he and I finished so Bruce could work on the silo unloader.  Overall it was a day of maintenance and fixing for him.  It was decided not to make a new shaft for the silo unloader blower as they could not get the old one pressed out of the rotor.As Ralph said "we don't wanna be blowin s**t up ". So instead he built it up with a welder and remachined it. The unloader didn't get entirely put together but the big piece is in place.  To fill the silo the unloader gets somewhat dismantled and rebalanced and then pulled to the top of the silo with a cable that is attatched to an electric winch. This way it is out of the way while we fill and can be let down on top of the silage again when we are ready to feed. The forage blower got it's old shaft put back in place and " tinkered" so it wouldn't move  and the chopper box had the bearing replaced on the main drive clutch that tightens the belts.  As long as he had it apart he replaced the belt and chains.  We sent Joe out today to cut thistles in the pasture.  Most of them have been mowed by Ed this year but there are some in the fence row where the mower isn't supposed to go.  Ed continued cutting seeding.  We will have to start chopping as early as we can tomorrow since it didn't get dry enough to start today.  We have everything ready to go, complete with a cooperative weather forecast.

Worn out silo unloader part

This is the silo unloader, slightly disassembled for repair

Bruce had the company of a young pigeon who didn't exactly appreciate his activities

Tinkering

Fri- This morning started with a heifer calf following the cows all the way home from the far end of the pasture.  Bruce caught her and put her in a fence.  She had obviously been born earlier in the evening because she was dry and had already made her plans for the day, and those plans did not include people.  It wasn't long and she had her fence tipped over and had gone into hiding, in the grass on the end of the calf hutches.  Calves can be like small children covering their eyes, just because they don't want you to see them and they hold really still they think you don't.  She had no interest in eating for me this morning but tonight I suggested that her mother said we should be friends and she drank 2 bottles for me.  LOL  We got the pregnancy test results back from the blood draws we sent in on Tues.  The last group we had 3 pregnant out of 5 samples.  This time we had 7 pregnant with 1 to recheck out of 8!  We chopped seeding today.  The weather was perfect.  The moisture levels started out ok enough and improved as we continued.  Ed finished cutting the rest of the seeding and then chopped for a couple hours so I could have a break.  As much as I like doing it, driving tractor and chopping wears on me.  I could chop today in 8th gear which translates into 5.1 mph!  It was fun to see the new alfalfa plants coming as I traveled around the fields.  We have a couple ditches ( washouts) in the fields from the rain earlier, one of which had started last year and is much worse this year.  On that field I chopped on one side of the water way and then chopped the other side as thought it was 2 separate fields, just so I didn't have to drive through the ditch.  When I am chopping I have to manuever 6 axels through and if you can't hit the ditch straight it puts a huge twist on the chopper box. This particular ditch is deep and there is no way to go through it straight. Twisting a chopper box, especially with a big load, lets just say we don't need anything else to fix.  By the end of the day we had chopped 29.9 acres!!!!  Three days of cutting and two days of chopping and we should be done.  This is much closer to normal....finally!!!  With the process of first crop hay getting extended so far out there is about 23 acres of 2nd crop that we could harvest so that will be the next project.  So much for Bruce having that period of time with nothing to do.  : )