Bale and Twine
Have you seen baling machines? They truly are a miracle of modern (or not so modern) engineering. We have one; we have watched it operate and I still don’t know how a machine manages to tie a knot.
Steve bought an old baler and a hay rake he found on Facebook marketplace. They were a decent price and we figure that we’ll need it eventually. I don’t know which came first the machinery or the conversation with the neighbor, but we ended up trying to bale some hay on the neighbors land.
Side note… Our neighbors are truly amazing people and not just because they let us bale hay. We honestly couldn’t have moved to a better location. Our “neighborhood association” is top notch. You know when you hear old people or country people talking about taking care of each other and banding together to take care of something like cutting up a fallen tree that’s blocking the road… That’s our “neighborhood”, all I can say is we are blessed.
Another side note… and also for future story telling. Our neighborhood association is made up of the “Sheriff”, Steve is the “Mayor”, and the “Shiny People”. When we first started working on the farm before we actually lived out here, our neighbors (the shiny people) were also in the process of purchasing their property. We would occasionally see their vehicle drive down the road, and we found out where they lived. And in a completely stereotyping type way, we nicknamed them the shiny people. And then the kids saw them on the night we camped out shortly after closing on the property, and according to them they completely fit into the “basic white girl” box we had fit them into. They are sooo pretty, and their smile sooo bright! Now, I would consider them friends and they are definitely shiny… inside and out, seriously some of the best people we know. Also, we did confess that we call them the shiny people… they laughed, so were cool.
Anyway, the shiny people let us practice baling hay on their place. We of course had to wait for a window when in time when it wasn’t raining. Have I mentioned how much I hate the rain? I guess it’s less about the rain and more about the mud. I hate the mud. SO, the shiny people but the grass and Steve used the hay rake to spread and turn the hay so it would dry. After the hay was good and dry, we attached the baler to the tractor and tried to make it work.
Spoiler alert…. it didn’t work.
It took us 3 days of replacing parts and trying and retrying but we finally got a bale of hay. It was more like a conjoined twin bale of hay because we didn’t have the things set right. But a bale of hay, none the less.
Steve thinks that he has finally fixed it, but now we have to wait for 1) another rainless window and 2) time to actually do it. It’s a good thing that this time was just practice
It’s also worth noting that Steve set his bifocals down on top of the baler while he was fixing it and forgot them there. They ended up in the hay bale. He found them later when he was feeding the cows.
“Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting”
