[AT] Question on a hay Rake

Indiana Robinson robinson46176 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 5 13:02:57 PDT 2010


On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Lew Best <lew at lewslittlefarm.com> wrote:
> Ok you got my curiosity up here.  I've always raked my little place here
> running counterclockwise (I've been using a NH 3PT rake; may switch to an
> old ground driven IH roller bar this year tho).  I've been using a JD 214ws
> baler; gonna try an IH 47 that I picked up this year.  I always baled in a
> counterclockwise direction also; is this incorrect?  If so why?  BTW my
> equipment is all "refugee" also.  :)
>
> Lew near Waco, TX
> website HTTP://lewslittlefarm.com
==========================================


An old friend from my late teen years became a professional brick
mason. One day a some years later I commented to him that I was not
very good at laying bricks and that I had to use my fingers a lot
instead of just using only the trowel. His response was that he had
laid bricks for years and that he still just did what ever he had to
do to do the job even if it meant pushing the mortar into place with
his nose...
That is how I always farmed... Whatever it took to do the job. If it
worked for me that is what I did. I never worried that my neighbors
might do it differently. I was not farming their farms and they were
not farming mine. They certainly were not paying any of my bills...
:-)
One reason to rake one direction or the other is so that you are not
driving on another windrow. That depends a lot on which side the
pickup on the baler (or chopper) is. If the windrows are light and far
apart it doesn't matter much. Also if you are dropping bales on the
ground you do not want them laying in the way when you come back
around the field again.
Other than a couple of factors I never planned the field out, I just
raked. We quit making hay about the time I got into high school but I
had already put up 3 barns full of hay a year by myself by then. It
was only after I was making hay for myself in more recent years that I
learned that a lot of the stuff that my father absolutely insisted on
being done a certain way was just so much silliness... :-)



-- 
Have you hugged your horses today?

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com




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