Bad Monday, Better Tuesday (so far)

Monday wasn't the best day for our farm, at least as far as the spring forage harvest is concerned.  We were able to chop, haul, and pack 16 loads of oat silage yesterday with no problems save a couple of minor chain issues and a flat tire on the dump truck.  But then, with several acres of oats on the ground ready to be harvested, the chopper's day was ended when a universal-joint cross broke on the drive shaft.

We hitched up the hay baler and bale wrapper a couple of hours later to finish the day's job.  Dad and I were making pretty good progress when one of the baler's roller chains broke after 29 bales.  We didn't have the parts we needed in our shop to fix it, so we parked the equipment for the night with 3-4 acres of oats still on the ground.  

Things started to improve for us this morning, though. The rain we were expecting this morning never fell, so Dad repaired the baler and sent one of our employees back to finish the job.   Meanwhile, a Select Sires rep came to the dairy to evaluate nearly 50 of our young cows for their Select Mating Service.  He told us this was one of the best groups top-to-bottom that we've had and we should expect big things from them over the next few years.

So here we sit at lunchtime on Tuesday feeling pretty good about the day.  The cows are getting their last hour of grazing in and I'm about to head to the field and wrap the 40+ bales that were rolled up this morning.  Milking will start up around 1pm and should be about finished by the time the next predicted rain gets here mid-afternoon. The weather could get pretty rough over the next 36 hours, but hopefully we'll get through it without any damage.  And with over 30 acres still left to harvest, we'll be keeping our fingers crossed that the coming storms don't keep us out of the field for several days like last week's storms did.