For the sake of all my blogger friends all over the world, I investigated this large bale. I posted earlier how the bale was made with the baler and yesterday I walked out in 93 degree heat to take a closer look. The field had enough hay to make five bales.
When I was a young guy in high school we made small square bales so I really never ever checked this out before now. I have seen them before but have never been close to them. They are big. I am 5 foot 6 inches and the bale from my body height seems to be five foot high. Can you see the coating on the outside of the bale to help protect it from water.
The material is put on the outside of the bale as it is turning in the baler. The farmer stops driving the baler and waits for it to string it's coating, then it drops it out of the back of the machine. Eventually a farmer comes with tractor and a fork and picks it up and places it in a row along a field or on a trailer to be carried away from the field.
As a side story I noticed Sunday that a farmer in another field along the highway had made a lot of these bales and they were on a hill. One of the bales was dropped out and it apparently rolled down the hill taking out a wire fence as it was siting in the ditch next to the highway.
I hope this gives everyone a closer view of the modern means of farming here in Iowa. Thanks for stopping by............
6 comments:
I've never seen one up close either, so this was very interesting. Thanks for the closer look and for tolerating the high temps.
I love these huge bales of hay; around here they cover some of them with white plastic and they look like giant marshmallows!
One of these days, I will have to post some pictures.
☼ Sunny
Thanks for the pictures and both these last post telling about baling hay. It is not something we see down here that's for sure.
FlowerLady
What we see is a round bale of hay, but what the cattle see is an "all you can eat hay buffet!"
;D
We round bale here too, it beats stacking bales by hand in the hot barns. When my kids were growing up they loved baling hay (square bales) because we hired all the neighborhood boys to come and help. They didn't realize it was work, they thought it was a party!
We appreciate your research efforts - especially in all that heat.
Beautiful blue skies in that hay field..progress sure is great isn't it..a one man job! That is sure a change from the old days..of square bales or the old hay stacks before that:)
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