Tell you what, those densely packed hard round bales and hills are no joke ! Around here is some beautiful landscape, lots of rolling hills, farmers have lots of experience working crop land in areas like these. Well except those who just switched over to round bales, like the farmer/neighbor I have been helping over the last several years.
They bale these hills with the round baler, as it is a bit risky with the small square baler and wagon, however, even after the first year, some were still getting away from the baler and end up in ravines, swamps and creeks, boy does a 3150 JD with a loader & FWA come in handy to get those out, don't ask how I know LOL. Someone even calls the darned town about these and he gets told to remove them, there were quite a few run-aways from previous years.
One after noon we have the JD7420 and '08 JD sileage special round baler, 583 ? I forget and the 4440/NH 315 baler in a 20 acre field, that is one big slope. I am running the tandem mack sileage body, from the field to the barn, his brother is loading, kind of a goofball, (had to show him how to pick 2 bales at a time etc.)parks his darned truck at the bottom left of the field. Now the farmers son is running the round baler, and he's really trying to use care when releasing he bales, using hedge rows to stop them. Well I'm standing there while the other guy loads and just as I turn around, 1 is coming right at me, LOOK OUT !!!! that would have hurt, they are 700 lb'ers. Well I chased after it and got it stopped. Ok, that was funny, but it aint over yet. I look across, and the field is every bit of 300 yards across, there goes another, from the top, now I look down, and see his truck, so I ponder about this, should I ??? Both balers stop and watch.... hmmmm, ok, I'm in, just like football, its all in the angle of pursuit, now I waited a bit before deciding, here goes this fool sprinting across the field, who is well into his 40's, after this bale, well don't you know I catch up to it but can't stop it, so I take an elbow and just bear down on it, like a brake, was not getting in front of it by any means, well there was a small ridge just in the right place, and my elbow/arm working like a brake and I got it stopped and turned the sucker 90 degrees so it could not roll again. It was headed directly at his brothers truck too ! His son said I don't know how he done it. I laughed, boy I felt like a kid again, invincible for a moment ! The other thing was that there is a really nice house at the bottom, with a nice deck, backyard, could you just imagine if one of those came rolling down in unexpected like ???? I think we have a new sport, bale rolling LOL, what an afternoon, I'll never forget it.
For the Cellist of ELO, what an unfortunate incident, one can never take safety lightly when it comes to round bales and hills.
I like those big squares, they fit into the sileage body with no wasted space and are so much easier to deal with, just that baler is so expensive, we did a bunch of them in '07.
