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Randy-IA 06-13-2009 07:18:19 207.177.83.91 18390 Report to Moderator

Well Mike, My equipment is in a constant state of disrepair too. Hours of fixing to keep it moving for about ten or twelve hours a year. 8:42AM and the sun just came out! As Martha would say - That's a good thing! I may get to salvage some of it. It's a good thing also that the horses are Arabs. They can come pretty close to living on snowballs! Anyway-I've been doing this for about the same amount of time I guess, this'll be the fourth year. So far I've been lucky I guess. I've always gotten it in before the rain came. But it seems that the meteorologists can't get anything even close this year for more than six hours in the future. They changed the forecast three times one day early in the week for the following day. Not the day I cut, that day they just changed it from 20% chance to 60% in the space of about four hours. I didn't hear the updated version till I was done cutting. I got about 2/10th's. Just a slow six hour light rain. I have so far made just enough hay to get through the winter. This year as of last week when I put 150 bales in the barn from the mixed hay side of the field (2 acres) I had about 15 bales left from last years crop. But last year was a dismal year with so much rain and only three cuttings. I guess you've figured out already that I have six acres of hay. No, I didn't overseed for weed control but that has been a welcome side effect. The stand was just thin from the original planting since I didn't have the right equipment for the primary tillage at the time. I borrowed a neighbors disk that was way to big for my tractor and disced the grass under when it was to wet and it made a horrible mess of rock hard root balls rolling around on the top. It was bad! So I had the seed mixed with liquid fertilizer and sprayed on then I ran over it with a spike drag set flat but that covered things to deep so two years later (this year) I found a food plot planter and put down about thirteen lbs to the acre of timothy seed. That was enough for a new planting. There was supposed to be brome down also but it wouldn't feed through the planter so it never got planted. It'll go down this fall maybe. Like you said trial and error! If some is good more is better! I'd pay closer attention if it were on a larger acreage but four acres doesn't cost that much to work. In a couple of years when the 2 acre alfalfa stand has petered out I'll move that to 2 of the 4 acres of this part of the field and let the grass take over in that part of the field. I better get out and look at the hay to see if it's dryed some yet. Got a nica breeze blowing today so it should be OK. Good luck with yours! ...Randy [Reply]   [No Email]