Late Summer On The Farm

Grazing is good again because we've had rain. In fact, it's so good that the horses have to wear grazing muzzles to cut their consumption of rich grass and the fat cows are too well fed and lazy to come into the barn for grain:

 The pink Rose Mallows have been blooming wildly for several weeks, and now the red Rose Mallows are blooming. Alas, it appears that there are only two red flowering plants this year:

 They look good together, especially with the neighbors' red barn in the background:

 There weren't many apples this year but you might think otherwise if you had walk across all these windfalls:

 The pear tree produced so much fruit that branches started to break off and fall to the ground. Sadly, one of the larger plum branches snapped under the weight of the fruit also:

 I'd previously cut a lot of weed trees and low hanging branches from the flowering crab trees, so I added the pear branches to the pile and hauled them all off to the brush pile in the woods:

  My north field was already hayed, but the far south field had not even had a first cutting yet. They mowed it and began tedding it, surprised that it produced as much hay as it did:

  There was little clover, but grass hay is just fine for my animals, and it looked pretty good:

 After numerous rounds of tedding and one of windrowing, he brought his baler and hay wagon:

 He also brought his uncle, who caught the hay bales as the kicker tossed them up and into the wagon:

 I rode with him in the wagon for awhile and was able to get the view as he saw it:

 The kicker ejects the bale with great force, sending it up and into the wagon. In most instances, he didn't have to actually catch it, but merely guide it through the air to the place he wanted it stacked. That little field produced 183 bales of hay. I should be all set for the winter, including the big, round bales which I purchased earlier: