Measure Twice, Cut Once

Here is a very beautiful sunset that the Lord graced us with.

Hello from the homestead

This post is an update of sorts, we are still haying, the baler is fixed and we can now see the end in site. Over all the haying is going very well only three breakdowns, all of them repairable so far. Now that we are almost done we have decided to share a few ideas I hope will help to boost the blog. The first one is to host a photo contest, it will be one in which anyone can enter by leaving a link to their favorite photo on their blog, they will be prizes and all those wonderful things. So to get a start on that here is my first unofficial photo entry.
My second idea is to host a photo tour of other blogs that have beautiful photos that they would like to share. Once I have the details worked out I will post them, but in the mean time please leave a comment with an email saying you would like to take part.

That is the plan and after a week or so of fixing and hauling home some very old but much loved farm equipment, I think we are just about ready to start. If you have made hay before then you know that one of the most important ingredients is lots of sunny, dry, hot weather.

The weather man is saying we will get 4 days of it so I think I will cut the first field - 5-6 acres today - and then see if the sunny weather holds. Then maybe in a couple of days the second field 3-4 acres.

Our haying story starts when we first moved to the homestead and I thought I would cut all my hay and put it up by hand. Well I had good intentions and I did buy the right scythe from the right guy, measured myself and had the handle made to fit me. I cut some and made a couple of hay cocks, even carried it in on the hand cart but when I had the chance to get some free equipment and the use of a tractor for the summer (thanks Mom!). I put the scythe back in the shed.

I think cutting hay by hand is a wonderful way to make hay, but I have made allot of hay with equipment and I know how fast it can go. I can cut, bale and stack under cover my entire hay crop, 9-12 acres in a few days with equipment. By hand you would be looking at I would be guessing here, well over 3 weeks to a month. I just don’t have that much time this year and I need to cut my own hay. For two winters we have been buying and that gets tired real fast when you have to haul it home and pay for it. We had been spending about $1000.00 a year for hay and gas to go get it. So we figured we would buy a few pieces of older, cheap equipment and put up our own. We had the hay just no way to put it up.

The first thing we bought was a self-propelled swather, we got a Massey Ferguson 36 at a farm sale for $500.00. It needed a little work on the cutter, new guards and a few sections; the section bar also broke. So far it has cost around $200.00 to get it ready. We used it to cut the hay fields early in the spring. I needed to knock down two years of uncut old hay growth. It also works great to clip tall weeds and tall mature grass the cows don’t eat in the pasture. That helps allot to keep the pasture clean of weeds and growing even.

The next thing we needed was a baler and it just so happened that my parents needed to clean out some of the old farm equipment that they had been collecting. So I hooked onto my trailer and headed down for a visit. The first thing we hauled back was an old New Holland 269 square baler. All it needed was a tire fixed and a few adjustments to get the plunger to run square. Next was a hay rake, now this piece is vintage - not sure of the date but it is old. With a little TLC, and if I take care handling it, it will rake all the hay I have.

So now I think we are ready to have at it. If all goes well we should have some very nice hay for half the price of buying it, in addition to a line of older but useable haying equipment (not including a tractor). Anyone have a nice tractor for sale cheap?

Update:
We started cutting hay and everything went pretty good, we got all the hay cut with only one break down on the swather, the section bar broke again. We will be making a new one this winter much heavier. Then we raked it and waited for it to dry and waited watching the sky for any sign of rain. We had lots of cloud but we prayed and kept an open line to the Lord and he held back the rain. God is good. After all that waiting and walking the field with a pitchfork, the swather made allot of little piles of hay as it was cutting and there needed to be pulled apart so that the hay would dry evenly. We where then ready to start baling the hay into little square bales and that went very well, until I broke both hay needles. We did get one field finished and the hay stacked. Now we are off to get the baler fixed and we should be able to finish the rest in the next couple of days God willing and the creek don’t rise as there say.

We have a winner! Congratulations to Rachel Crisman!  Thanks to everyone for entering the contest!  Hope to see you again next quarter for another Bloggy Giveaway!

It is Bloggy Giveaway Time again already! If you are here for the giveaway - welcome! Please take a peek around my blog. I’m a conservative, born-again Christian, husband and father of 3 so far. Here on my blog you’ll find articles, posts and pictures related to our families homesteading journey. We live off-grid in a hand-built alternative house, keep livestock, garden etc. and I love sharing what we have learned so far. I’d love to meet you, so feel free to leave me a comment as you browse. Bookmark me and come back often for. updates, and the ocassional cute photo of my children.

Now for the giveaway!

I am giving away the winners choice of a $10 Amazon gift certificate, or 1000 EntreCard credits. (Please drop me while you are here!)

CONTEST RULES:

This contest is open to everyone worldwide with an email address. Winner will be contacted by email, so be certain to include a valid email with your entry (it will not be publicly displayed).

To enter leave a comment on this post with your preference, Amazon or EC credits, and what you would spend your prize on.

To earn an extra entry blog about this contest, and leave a link to your post in an additional comment.

The contest will be closing Friday, August 1st at Midnight MST. A winner will be randomly chosen by one of my daughters on Saturday. Winner will be emailed and posted on the blog, so be certain to include your email address! The winner will have 72 hours to respond, or a new winner will be chosen.

Thanks for entering!

On the homestead I like to walk around to do fence repairs and other small jobs, it keeps me in shape and I can listen to the birds and my children as they like to tag along with me most of the time. Now that my children are getting bigger 5 and 2 I can’t carry them and my tools, so I got an idea that has been working very well. I went down to the toys R us folks and bought them a little gator, ride on electric car.

The thing works great I would buy another one if I needed it very happy with it so far, we have been throught some pretty rough country and I only have to help with a push now and then. My daughters can even carry a few things in the box for dear old dad. The best thing is it is electric and it’s very quiet we charge the battery off our solar panels or wind mills.

I have always wanted an electric car but I’m still waiting for a new kind of battery to power one, I think allot of people are waiting for this new battery.

Cats

One of the most important animals on the homestead is the barn cat; we got five of them the first summer we moved to our homestead on a full time basis. We started with four males and a female, all intact. With four to one you would think that the female would have had us a great pile of kittens. But in the two summers we have had them we have been blessed with one live kitten. The little female never took to mothering she would have a few, hide them well but then forget to feed them. She just would not mother her kittens, and so we had about give up on her. The males started spraying so I had to cut them - that fixed that problem. I thought that should slow the little female down from having more kittens but it didn’t. They managed to get her into kitten the day before they got fixed.

It was a complete surprise to us the day we came home from having our third daughter - the cat came running into the house with a live kitten in her mouth. My first thought was “How long will this one last?” She put it in the box I had setup for her (the last attempted batch of kittens) in the corner out of the way. She seemed to be spending a lot of time with the kitten, and she moved it around the house a few times before settling on a spot. She had me move her box next to the computer desk; she brings her kitten out into the middle of the floor to nurse it. Now my wife and the cat both nurse their new babies together. My wife looks over at the mother cat and smiles and the cat looks up at my wife and smiles. So all is well with the cats now, all I have do is hope that after she raises this one she will be able to find an intact male to get more kittens from and then we might be blessed with more then just one kitten at a time.

GOD has blessed us by giving our family a beautiful little baby girl, she is my third daughter and I pray the Lord will continue to bless our family with many, many more children. She was born at grandma’s house with all of her loving family attending, however her two older sisters did miss her coming into the world by a couple of minutes as they had gone off to the park to play. They were getting tired of waiting for their mom to bring their baby sister into the world. But all went well and we are already planning for the next one if the Lord will bless us again. Our new baby was born Monday morning just before lunch and was a big girl at 10 lbs, her name is Sarah and she is much loved by her two older sisters. We are now working out the new sleeping arrangements, as the two older girls now have to make room for baby Sarah in our family bed. There has been a bit of sadness here, as the older one now has to move over to the boy’s side of the bed with papa.

In time all will be well again as we all have to change our ways to make room for the baby. We will hopefully be heading back home in a couple of days as we don’t minding staying at my wife’s grandparents, for they are truly the grandparents everyone wishes they had for their own. But it will be nice to get everyone home and settled in again, as there are many things to do at home, we will soon have to start cutting hay. The small garden we planted this spring will be in need of weeding and the potatoes are in need of being hilled, no end to all the wonderful things it takes to keeping a small homestead going.