36 BALES

Last night at 9:30 Mark and I went out on the deck to watch the moon. We sat there for 3 minutes then both of us decided it wasn't worth staying up for and went to bed. Thankfully Jim Carlson took the picture below. He sure didn't use his phone for that shot. It is AMAZING! Thanks for sharing Jim.

I went over to the barn before breakfast and figured out by myself how to get a jump drive to play on the big screen tv there. Now that I know I feel a little foolish, it is actually easier than what we were making it out to be. That smart tv is much smarter than us old folks. The people renting the barn this weekend are having an end of life celebration for their mother and they wanted to play the slide show that the funeral home gave them. The people renting the farm house would like a grill. We have 3 grills but all of them need new parts so Mark ordered 3 sets of parts. They are supposed to be here by tomorrow and the renter isn't coming until Sunday so hopefully we can get one grill going. I took 3 propane tanks to FS in Peoria to get them filled. That cost $53.63 but if we get all 3 grills going we have the propane to make them fire up. I had all the cleaning supplies on the golf cart but saw a car at the barn. It was Rhoda, she had taken Iris and Zeke on the trails. Rhoda and Zeke rode Jury while Iris rode Penny. Below Iris is taking Penny back to her paddock. 

Rhoda wanted to work with Star's filly. Today she followed her mom right into the stall. Once haltered Rhoda gave her a good grooming then we took her out to the round pen. Below is the video. I was so pleased that she remembered all the work we did before we took her out to Middle Grove a couple months ago.

We also took a few still pictures for the website.

After she was put away Rhoda pulled Harli out.

Today was the day Rhoda wanted to actually sit on this untrained mare. She has been doing so well with the ground work that today was the next step.  Merlin, Harli's colt by Evan was tasting the leather on the saddle and thought that tasted pretty good. He is the typical colt, everything goes into his mouth. He got a kiss today.

The farmer was raking the hay as we were working with Harli. It didn't bother her and kept Zeke entertained.

Harli did so much better than I expected and we were VERY pleased. There was no drama at all.

After the horses were put away Rhoda helped move a bale in for Valiant. 

After Rhoda left I went back down to the farm house to finish the floor scrubbing. 

The farmer finished the raking, took the rake back and brought the round baler over. That was finished after 5:00 pm. We got 36 big round bales and 2 smaller bales. We had some supper then went out at 6:00 pm to start moving them inside. Mark used the tractor and I used the skid steer. We finished stacking the last bale after dark and by 8:30 pm we were more than ready to quit.

They hay is quality, green, fine stemmed and smells great. Nothing like the smell of freshly baled hay in the barn. We have 27 bales left from first cutting and 36 second cutting giving us 63 bales here and 84 bales at Middle Grove to make it through the winter for this herd of ours. 

I was covered in bits of hay and dust and could hardly wait to get into the shower. Mark was willing to wait until I finished. You don't get covered in hay while driving the tractor.