Rounding Out My Internship

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To kick off this final week, I started bailing oats that had been cut over the weekend. It was fairly high humidity, and the dew was thick from the night before, so after moisture-testing my first bale, it tested way high. I shut down the bailer, hoping to let things dry out a little before bailing the rest, and moved on to other priorities. After bee-bopping around for a while, Wyatt and I moved equipment into town. We had a second cutting on the field we had cut earlier in the haying season. I took the 7700 and the new rakes while Wyatt followed behind with the 2750 and square baler.

Tuesday started the same as the day prior, in the baler. Once it was too dry to bale, I set out to finish the project I had started weeks earlier, the oilers. I first had to replace the old drapes with the newer, nicer drapes. Then I hooked up the dirt bike trailer to the ranch dodge, mixed diesel and the insecticide, loaded the oilers, and headed down the road. The first oiler was just down the road, south on a big reservoir. After man-handling the oiler off the trailer, I filled the tank with the diesel mix, hooked up the remaining tubing, primed the cores, and moved on to the next one. The second oiler is supposed in the Lindsay pasture, which is quite a ways back from the road. I refilled my tanks, loaded the oiler, and traversed back in to the pasture to one of the wells. After setting it out, I made it back just in time for supper.

Mid-week days began similarly, I started the day in the bailer, but was quickly shut down because it was so dry and made the baler act up. After twiddling with it the best I could, I called it quits on messing with it until someone could come help me get it back going. To keep busy, I greased and fueled the swather and got it moved south to the next field. After getting it all ready, Gerry came and showed me how to fix the baler, and I got it ready for the following day.

Finally, I finished the baling that had taken all week. I got up early and babysat until it was ready to be baled. After baling, Claire and I helped tear fencing down around a hay stackyard. We got this down quickly, because a rain storm was rolling in and I needed to bring the 2750 and square baler back from town yet. Before it could be parked for the year, it needed to be blown out and cleaned.

To end the week, after getting some other small baling done, I had to fix a sickle tooth that had snapped and was causing the header to leave grass uncut. Once the swather was back up and running good, I went back out to check on the oilers to make sure they were still pumping well. This pretty much ended my day, and I headed back to the house.

Submitted by: Jaxon Ondracek
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team