This weekend (a long one thanks to Christopher Columbus) we brought in 22.6 ton of hay. We had plenty of help, but it was still a lot of work. Our hay suppliers have an amazing attachment for their tractor which can pick up 12 bales at a time and stack them on a trailer. They were able to do almost all the loading with that machine in very little time (about 11 tons in 1 hour). The hay suppliers loaned us a flatbed gooseneck trailer which I pulled with our 3/4 ton diesel truck. Our helpers also had two trucks, a one-ton pickup and a two-ton flatbed with an additional trailer. With all that capacity, each trip up the mountain brought us 11.3 tons!
I drove two 4.5 ton loads up to the ranch, and helped unload one of them into the Big Barn. The Small Barn by the house is full, we have a nice sized stack in the yard near the friendship circle (aka fire ring), the Goat Barn is full, and the Big Barn is nearly full. Next weekend, our helper is going to bring more loads up, and we will start filling the Hay Barn across from the New Moon pasture.
We had a little excitement when I got the flatbed trailer stuck in the muck down by the Big Barn. We huffed and we puffed but could not budge that trailer. It only weighed about 13,000 lbs, so I'm not clear on why it sank so fast. Our helper was able to unload it into his pickup and shuttle the hay to the Big Barn. After the trailer was unloaded, we got it out of the mud easily.
Over the weekend Christie and I also gathered up jack-legs for the lower Little Barn pasture and laid them out all in a line. These were the heavy duty ones Jarred put together for the stallion pasture, so it took both of us to lift each one. We will begin erecting that fence as time permits this week. Also this week we will have to hit some of the stores in town to see if anyone is giving away palettes, we had to scour the ranch this last weekend in order to have enough for all the hay that came in.
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1 comment:
That made me tired just reading it.
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