so waht ya doin today?

[JonB]

Probably feeling the reduced indoor humidity more than 20 degrees. No geothermal here, indoor temp at 74 and July electric was $128. After paying SoCal electric rates that's next to nothing.

My tall and large house doesn't have central air. I do have a small (5000btu) window unit in the bedroom of the first floor and run it only on hot days, during the afternoon, I shut it off when I go to bed, the bed room usually stays cool if the sun isn't beating on the west side of the house (where the bedroom is). It removes the humidity, that's really all I need, along with ceiling fans...that room has a tall ceiling (the first floor of this house has several rooms with various height ceilings). The wall thermometer on the other side of the house usually shows 80 or 81 on a real hot day.
My House size/height is a big plus for living without central Air. The second floor gets hotter of course, I just avoid going up there on hot days. The Attic (3rd floor) has insulation in the floor and a tall ceiling and steep Hip Roof with two window dormers, It's a large space with probably more cubic air space than the second floor, and is well vented...but Dang it gets HOT up there on a sunny calm day...BUT all that keeps the first floor from getting overly HOT.

 

[Pistolero]

Well, yeah, it's Minnesota. I don't have AC at the Colorado cabin, either. When it is 104 down in
Pueblo, it is about 72 up at the cabin or so. I say it is "up where the AC is always on.......even in January."

A good load of hay, and old school square bales like I used to toss into the hay barn back in the
70s. I weighed 150 and the bales weighed 60 lbs, and I had to toss them up onto a platform higher
than I can reach with my fingertips, arms fully extended. THAT was work.

Bill

 

[Gary]

Ya aughta try Alfalfa hay if you want a workout. Ours were close to 90# and would eat up your arms in short order if you weren't wearing a heavy cotton shirt.

 

[smokeywolf]

Bill, you must have been working with those little 2-wire bales. You're not just whistlin' Dixie, throwing bales up over your head is about as physically demanding as you can get.
The bales I used to buy, store and feed to my horses were the 3-wire bales; typically weighed 70+ pounds. 13 flakes to the bale; almost feed a horse for a week.

 

[Pistolero]

No wire on our bales, binder twine, and yeah two strands. And gloves were mandatory. Damned hard work.
You had to swing it up, get the height and then as it was floating there for 1/4 sec , put one hand on the back to shove
it forward and up so it would make the platform. If it missed, tough rocks. Do it again, wimp.

Picking them off the end of the baler trough and carrying them forward in the trailer and stacking them was
EASY....in 98F 90% RH open sun. Damned itchy, hay, on a bare sweaty body.

Never saw the three strand type. We had enough trouble handling 60 lb bales, geez 70 lbers would have killed
us. And I was always the littlest guy on the crew. 5'6" 150 lbs....but no excuses, gotta do the job to get paid.

The princely sum of $1.42/hour, too.

Never heard of "a flake" as a subset of a bale.

90 lb bales would have killed me, I'm just not big enough. We unloaded a semi of alfalfa dried powder
in 50# sacks one afternoon. We all looked like the Jolly Green Giant after that exercise.

Bill

 

[smokeywolf]

Bales of alfalfa hay are comprised of sections easily pulled off the bale, about 4 inches thick, called "flakes". Two flakes per horse, per day.

 

[Pistolero]

OK, never actually saw any alfalfa hay, so never saw this flake thing.
Alfalfa is not grown in Fla that I knew of., maybe some. When the feed lot needed whatever kind of
special sauce that alfalfa has for their cattle, they ordered the dried, powdered version in 50 lb bags. They had
a feed mill, mixed their own feed. We did hay and silage on site, and kept the pastures in good shape. So they
grass fed some, and ran a lot more through the feed lot operation, huge long troughs and a mixer truck
that they would drive along and it dispensed the feed into the trough. Big mill with multiple bins to mix
up their special mix to fatten up the cattle. North Central Fla.
Most are surprised to know how much beef Fla puts out, seems like something like 12th place in beef, at least
back then. Texas is the biggest, of course.

 

[Winelover]

The only Alfalfa, I was exposed to was on TV, when I was very young.

 

[RBHarter]

I grew up in alfalfa country , that's all there is there for hay except the imported straw . 2 wire 85-90# , 3 wire 110-120# . You shore didn't want to irritate one of the farm girls , ya might get hurt . The alfalfa is very high nitrogen as plants go . It has to be dry when baled and kept dry , haystacks are few for this reason . Every few year we would have a hay fire either from a stack going autoignition or stacked bales blowing up . If the bales are too wet they "bleed" nitric acid that pools in the core . Effectively the center bales become 2-500# of gun cotton with a core temp around 250° ..........boom ! Flaming staw all over the place falling into loose , dry , floating hay ....... alfalfa in both cases .

Only 85 today , but the humidity is high . I don't know how high but at 65 this morning the water was falling out in the air flow disruption over the windshield wipers , so I'm going with high .

Head ache , over heated , broncitus , sinuses cranky , ..........I'm a mess early to bed tonight I think .

 

[Pistolero]

Dang! That sounds pretty exciting. Don't mess with the alfalfa.

Walked 1.7 miles, did a bit of woodworking, still taking it pretty easy. Tried out a Kahr CM-9, shoots to POA
pretty well, and ran fine with 9mm ball. Next test will be Gold Dots. Seems a nice little pocket 9.

 

[Bret4207]

You saw flakes Bill, you just didn't realize it. Ever notice when a bale broke open, maybe a bad knot or when someone was feeding one out, that the hay was in sections, one after the other? That's how a square baler works- The plunger pushes a wad of hay against the string/wire and the bales ahead of it and then retracts to get another wad of hay from the feeder system. Those "wads" become "flakes" as they get compressed. It's more evident in heavier hay and with a newer baler in good condition. With good hay in a decent baler it only takes (should take!) 12-15 strokes of the plunger to turn out a bale. Older, smaller balers (like the junk I run) tend to have much smaller pickups and feeder systems and you don't see those 12 or 13 flakes bales. We get some in the right weather, but not a lot.

No one up here is making those 70 plus pound bales anymore! 30-45 lbs is the norm and I'd say most are closer to 35 than 45. I haven't seen a wire tie baler outside of at the local museum. One guy had one for sale for many years but I think he finally scrapped it. The square bales often get sold to the horsey people,which means ladies, and they don't want anything over 40 lbs. What we do get up here is lots of round and large square bales weighing 500 -1500lbs. The biggest reason is labor. As many here noted, no one really enjoyed tossing bales into the mow (hay loft, rhymes with cow) even if they weight 30 lbs. It's hot, filthy work. No one wants to do that anymore. So the farmer uses machinery instead of labor...and slowly go out of business.

Got the busted needles (a curved, 3 foot long steel casting) from my baler brazed back together. They work. Still have to fine tune some things. Pretty sure my main issue is 60 year old parts on a 60 year old baler that any normal person would have scrapped 40 years ago. What can I say? They don't call me "Farms with Junk" fer nuthin'!

Nice pics Will! Looks a lot like the land around here. How many acres are you puting up?

 

[Ian]

That's a highly respectable Indian name Bret, bear it with pride! At least you're still doing it, seems the type is getting scarce.

 

[462]

Getting closer to a jacketed load for the scouterized Swede. Got a very nice 50-yard 1/8" East/West spread, but 1 1/8" North/South, with 43-grains of IMR 4350, a Winchester large rifle primer, and Remington's (discontinued?) 140-grainer. Thinking of comparing the same load with CCI and Federal primers.

Also took the Pedersoli/Navy Arms Buffalo Rifle -- .45-70 rolling block -- with Lyman's 457124 385-grainer and 14.7-grains of Unique. Today's grouping didn't live up to others, from the past, but still an all-day hoot-to-shoot.

 

[fiver]

a hotter 9-1/2 or 9-1/2M primer might just settle that down.

I took one look at that hay wagon and started sweating and itching.
I took a job changing out rail road ties during the summer just to get out of throwing that stuff all summer.
the RR Tie job also paid money, something bucking hay didn't do.
I also got food at a regular interval which was a bonus as a teenage boy.

made it down for some more Bass fishing this morning.
light breeze and 58 when I hit the lake, 92 on top of the hill coming home.
seen a Fisher this morning running down the shoreline after I slid in on him on the breeze.
coulda got him pretty easy with the Ruger 22 if I'd a mind to, but it was prime feeding time for the fish and I just took a moment to watch it scurry away.
messed around with a few new lures today, one was one I have used off and on over the years and it just happened to be in my box from the Lake Powell trip a couple of years back.
the one that cost me dinner when I bet Dawn she couldn't catch a crappie with it, she not only got a couple of crappie but got a nice striper on it too.
[still don't know how she caught crappie on a 4" lure 4' above their head]
it slowly sinks if you just let it sit and mimics a dying bait fish if you twitch it, but will dive down to about 4' and swim like a Rapala on a steady retrieve.
the faster you reel it in the wider the tail action gets, it's a pretty neat lure.

anyway, I decided to mess with it and one of my usual soft baits that mimics an injured crayfish pretty well covering the top/middle and bottom of the water column.
the first top water hit on the hard lure got my attention real quick since it was the first cast with that lure and I was just watched it sit there for about 15 seconds I took up the slack and just barely moved it about 2"s when it got slammed.
I lost that fish when it jumped and threw the hook, but I was pretty well hooked on that deal right there.

 

[Rally]

Set up four new beaver jobs today. The bugs are BAAAAAADDDDD. Poor deer are out in the clearings trying to find some wind to get away from some of the deer flies, which seem to be here longer than usual this year.
Was cleaning out a small culvert the beaver had plugged on a forestry road. There was a fallen log about 25 feet out in the pond. Finished cleaning the culvert and turned around to see two wood ducks sitting on the log watching me work. They probably figured anyone crazy enough to be wallowing around in the mud, in this heat, probably didn't have a shotgun.
Did I mention the bugs are bad? Come on winter!

 

[Tom]

All this talk about bales has me breaking out in a rash. I grew up in a ranching town but was a towny. I got talked into helping stack hay a couple of times but was smart enough to limit it to 10 or 40 times. (Slow learner, I guess) Stacking bales ranks right up there with weightlifting while wearing underwear insulated with fiberglass. Those farm boys were a tough lot.

 

[CZ93X62]

Bill, those amberjack you caught in FL are the East Coast cousins of our yellowtail. Great table fare, and a great fight. This assumes you can keep the sea lions away from your fish. I despise those furbags. Lazy, indolent loafs that crowd harbor bouys until they see a hook-up or hear a reel clicking--then they are in the water in an instant, and ON the hooked fish. You hope that the bay anglers keep the sea lions entertained while you head out to open water where the darn things aren't so numerous. SoCal needs more orcas, for sure.

 

[Winelover]

Tried out a Kahr CM-9, shoots to POA
pretty well, and ran fine with 9mm ball. Next test will be Gold Dots. Seems a nice little pocket 9.

That's my preferred CC semi. I don't like the extended mags, though. They aren't comfortable. It's that annoying gap between the frame and the bottom of the magazine. Tried to fill it with different sized O-rings, to no avail. They just interfere with seating the magazine. The shorter ones a more conducive to CC, anyways. Sights are fast and well defined but a bit strange. I have CT's Laserguard on mine, rather than going the night sight option.

 

[Bret4207]

Spent some of the evening researching that baler knotter that giving me issues. Found a treatise on line, complete with pictures, by a guy who's been a knotter specialist for 45 years! Learned things Mr New Holland never even thought of mentioning. Problem still comes back to wear. Will play with things more today.

 

[462]

a hotter 9-1/2 or 9-1/2M primer might just settle that down.

Thanks, fiver.
However, one of life's mysteries is why Remington primers have never been sold locally, nor anywhere else in the state I've looked.