The Baler Failed

I was looking for a picture for this post, and I just liked this one that one of my children took of a young hen next to our John Deere 24T baler as we were greasing it up for what we expected to be a great haul of hay. That didn't happen, and I am trying to be philosophical about it. It's 1 AM and the pouring rain just stopped. This means that my hay that was prime and all raked into nice windrows is now a reclamation project, and my baler is going to the shop.

We could not get one side of the twine to tie. This was puzzling because the baler worked fine last season, and it was kept inside the barn all winter. My son Michael, the "farm mechanic" changed the twine and tried multiple rethreadings with no success. He then found the problem. A small piece of the knotter was broken off - end of story at 5 PM on a Saturday night in Western Pennsylvania.

We took a bit of the hay off using pitchforks and our small trailer, just to get the broken bales off of the field, and we were hoping that the 51 % chance of rain wouldn't come to fruition, but it rained for about an hour near midnight.

I have considered getting rid of the baler and using the Gene Logsdon approach, or a modified version of his "Cheapskate Haystacks" - rakes are much more reliable.

Last year was the first year we had baled hay in a long time. I had baled it about 15 years ago, and then just gave it up along with the cows when the kids were young. Since we've brought back the cows, about four years ago, we have bought hay, but we also have just cut it with the tractor and mower and brought some in by hand with pitchforks and the trailer. This would get us about half of our hay needs for 8 cows, and if done right it's kind of a fun family project.

Last year we bought this old baler and a New Holland rake for very reasonable prices and made some hay for the first time in a long while, but right now I kind of wish I had cut about 1/3 of the field and we had brought it in by hand.

However, this stuff happens when you are making hay. The baler is the lynch-pin to the operation. I spent many hours of my youth helping my grandfather to fix his Oliver baler with a field full of hay raked and ready. We got rained on some back then, too. And come to think of it that Oliver baler and his New Holland before the Oliver were decades newer than my old John Deere is now.

The "lost" hay