The progression of a hay field.

Skyler and I walk almost every day.  It's no secret that I like this one particular canal road near our house.  Up by that canal road is an 8 acre hay field.  I know the owner from when I used to be a parts guy at John Deere.  He's a former realtor and a wanna be farmer/rancher.  So far this year, I've fixed his baler and his swather.  Last week he cut his 2nd crop of alfalfa with little to no chance of it getting rained on he told me.  Wrong.  It's been rained on at least 3 times now.  For those of you that don't know much about baling hay, rain = bad quality hay.  Plus the additional moisture makes the hay start to decay resulting in poor quality feed for the animals that consume it.  It's a good thing this is just hobby farm hay for horses.

Two weeks ago.

Looking west.  This was seeded this spring.

Looking to the southwest.  Kennecott copper mine is just visible to the right.

There's a broken swather somewhere in this picture.

Last Tuesday, just starting to open up the field.

A better view of the windrow produced by the swather.

Anyone for prickly lettuce?  Prickly lettuce is a noxious weed.

The swather sits where it broke down.  I got the call to come fix it a few hours later.

This morning's happenings.  The little Ford tractor is raking windrows to help them dry before they get baled.

Hay should be green in color when it's conditioned before baling.  Not straw color.  You can see a few bales in the distance.

Skyler looking at the tractors.

He was screaming "tractor" even though they weren't running.