Baling Hay

Par for the course with anything having to do with Bruce, I got a last minute phone call this afternoon wanting to know if I could bale hay, NOW.  I simply ask how high when he says jump.  Robert was barely out of the car to take over Monster duty when I headed to the hayfield.

I fully expected to see these vehicles as I crossed a pasture full of boer goats...

But I would much rather have seen Bruce in a tractor than beside one as I pulled up.

Bruce will cut hay for just about anyone and in the four years that I have baled hay for him it seems like we spend way more time cleaning up pastures that haven't been cut in several years than baling pastures that are clean.  The combination of less than ideal fields and the fact that Bruce uses equipment hard means lots of torn up equipment.  Since I've spent many hours over the last few years waiting on torn up equipment, I was glad this was an easy fix despite the fact that he had to repeat it a few times over the evening.  

Knowing this field wasn't going to be an easy one to work, I was not looking forward to raking.  I really dislike raking hay.  Mostly I blame this on Bruce because the hay rake he made me use for two years had broken hydraulics which was not fun to use in thick, heavy hay where the hay balled up and stuck in the rake repeatedly.  I was happy to see a new rake attached to the old tractor.  I was even happier when Bruce told me I'd be baling and he'd be raking hay.  

So for the next four hours the view in front of me looked like this...

And the view I saw most often looked like this...

Which was actually a little easier to photograph when the sun went down.

And lucky for me I only had to see this view three times...

(Just a sidenote:  past experience has shown me you should never let a dude know you are taking his picture when equipment necessary to make money is broke down or stuck in the mud.)

Finally, Bruce finished raking quite a bit ahead of me so we traded rides and I headed for home.  

Barring anymore breakdowns, I'm thinking he should be leaving the field just as I'm heading to bed.  I've known few people like him.  That man just can't stop working.