Friday, August 27, 2010

Farm Equipment Fridays: Round baler

4 comments:
FEF badge thumbnail
Last we left Farm Equipment Fridays, we had finished raking the hay into windrows.  Next comes the baler.
(This is a photo-heavy entry, so be a little patient.  I promise, it’s worth it!)

We use a round baler.  This equipment makes, you guessed it, bales of hay that are round.  There are other balers that make square bales.  We may talk about those later.  But, for now!  The round baler!
round baler for hay 1


The tractor drives over the newly raked windrows, and pulls the baler behind it.  The baler has a rake at the bottom that rakes up all the hay from the windrow and throws it inside the baler. 
round baler for hay 2

There are conveyer belts inside the baler that roll the hay around and around and around inside.  More hay gets added to the outside, sort of like a big snowball.  This whole time, the conveyer belts are packing the “hay ball” tight.
round baler for hay 3

When the baler is full, it beeps, and the tractor driver knows to stop.  A full baler has a bale of hay that is about 5-1/2 feet in diameter.
round baler for hay 4


Once the bale is made, it needs something to keep it together.  We use string, but other people use plastic.  The full bale is rolled around inside the baler some more, and the string is wrapped around the bale.  

Once the bale is wrapped, the back door of the baler opens, and the bale falls out.
round bale of hay 1

round bale of hay 2

round bale of hay 3


Pretty neat, huh?
round bale of hay 4


The baler has a bar that pushes the completed bale away from the back of the equipment, so the door can shut again.
round bale of hay 5

round bale of hay 6


The bale rolls away a little bit, the door closes, and the baler moves on!
round bale of hay 7

round bale of hay 8

round bale of hay 9

round bale of hay 10
.

And we are left with bales of hay scattered around our field. 
round hay bales in field


(Don’t worry, we’ll come back and pick them up later.)


Step 1 - Mower/conditioner
Step 2 - Tedder
Step 3 - Rake
Step 4 - Baler
Step 5 - Bale Spear

Monday, August 23, 2010

Another ticket giveaway: Dig-IN!

4 comments:

Dig In

Thanks once again to the kind folks at the Indiana Soybean Alliance, I have 2 tickets to Dig-IN to give away!

Dig-IN is Sunday, August 29 at the White River State Park in Indianapolis.  This promises to be a fun-filled day, starting at noon.

The list of entertainment includes:  food tastings, beer and wine tastings, ice cream making demonstrations, cooking demonstrations, gardening exhibits, Q&A sessions with local chefs, local bands, and much more!

To enter the giveaway, you can get one entry each for:

That’s four entries!  (Already follow?  Already a fan?  That counts too – just leave me a comment and let me know!)

The winner of the 2 tickets will be chosen by random drawing and announced Friday, August 27 at 12:00 noon Central Time.  Good luck!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Time to come clean

5 comments:

I haven’t been so great lately, about a couple of things.

Obviously, I haven’t blogged lately.  To follow that, I haven’t been following my fellow bloggers, either. 

And then there’s the morning thing.  When I first started this adventure, it was primarily to give myself some accountability to get out of bed in the morning.  And it worked. 

For a while.  Now I’m back to my old “hit the snooze until I just can’t stand it anymore” habit. 

The other morning, this translated into 90 minutes.

90 minutes!

That time is spent being neither awake nor asleep – just somewhere lost in the land of in between.  And this translates to less productivity for me for the rest of the day.

Not to mention that my husband told me last night how much he hates my snooze going off repeatedly in the mornings.  (Nevermind the fact that he’s supposed to be up too…  we’ll let that slide for now.)  So I informed him that I would set the alarm for 6:30am this morning, and that I would hit have one 10-minute snooze.  And that he should feel free to remind me of this when I whine.

So.  This morning.  I did it!  I wasn’t happy about it, but my feet were on the floor, and did not get back into bed at 6:40am.  Fed the cats, into the shower, laundry started, rest of the morning, etc etc etc. 

And here it is, not quite 9:00am.  I am caught up on email for the morning, I have my list of things to do, and am ready to head out the door to run a few errands before settling down into my PhD work for the day.

Off I go!  (coffee in hand)

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

State Fair Ticket winner!

No comments:

State Fair Day

Congratulations…  Crystal!

Please email me with your address to claim your prize!

We had a blast at the fair, and I’ll have lots of photos to post over the next few days.  Once I get all 400 off my fancy camera, that is!

Special thanks for the Indiana Soybean Alliance for the State Fair Tickets (mine and the giveaway set), and to Indiana Dairy, Indiana Pork, and Indiana Beef for feeding us yesterday!

Monday, August 9, 2010

It’s Indiana State Fair Day!

1 comment:

Today’s the day!

Thanks to the Indiana Soybean Alliance, my hubby and I and some of my bloggy friends are headed to the Indiana State Fair today with some complimentary tickets.

We’ll get some behind the scenes views of what goes on at the fair, and have some yummy fair food.  (Nothing like a day at the fair to make you decide that TOMORROW is the day to start watching what you eat!)

I’ll be Twittering about the goings-on, so be sure to watch the Twitter feed here.  Or, better yet, just go ahead and follow me on Twitter!  Later this week I’ll be blogging about what we did in a little more detail than the Twitter adventures.

If you haven’t entered yet, don’t forget to enter for the Indiana State Fair Ticket Giveaway here, and at my GOODe friend’s sites!  You can enter until midnight tonight (Eastern time), and I’ll announce the winner at noon on Tuesday.  (And, yes, if you entered at the WordPress site, you’re still entered.)

Friday, August 6, 2010

It’s time for a change

3 comments:

I have made a decision.

(Well, I have made more than one today.  Like to get my Starbucks extra hot instead of regular.  But this is the one that pertains to you.)

I am moving to Blogger.

That’s right, I will no longer be posting to WordPress.

I have been cross-posting for some time, but I am tired of that, so I am officially moving.

Since you’re already here, you must know how to find me already!

For those of you who get the email updates from my WordPress blog, there is an RSS Feed you can subscribe to on the new site.  (Look for “On Your Own Time” on the right.)

I’m also on Twitter now!  Still playing with this a bit, so stay tuned for the tweeting fun!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Too bad, so sad…

3 comments:

My cute little point-and-shoot camera died last weekend.  We were on a tour of the Southern Indiana-Purdue Agricultural Center (which I promise to blog about…  sometime…) with the Indiana Farm Bureau.

One minute, I was taking a picture.

The next minute, I had a black screen.

No amount of button-pushing did me any good.

Luckily, a fellow blogger was sitting right next to me, and she shared her photos of the tour with me.  For my blog post in the nebulous future.  In fact, she’s already beat me to it!  But this won’t deter me.  I’ll blog about it anyway!!!

Andrea was also nice enough to loan me a fancy Nikon she isn’t using anymore.  I haven’t had a chance to play with it, but will be doing just that this weekend!  Then, I’ll be all practiced up for my trip to the State Fair on Monday!

Don’t forget…  I’m giving away 4 free Indiana State Fair tickets on Tuesday!!

Monday, August 2, 2010

It’s State Fair Time!

6 comments:
Are you ready for some State Fair fun?






Some GOODe friends and I are getting ready for Family Fair Days with GOODEness Gracious 'N Friends at the Indiana State Fair! We will be visiting the State Fair and giving you some behind the scenes looks at awesome State Fair activities sponsored by the Indiana Soybean Alliance!

To kick things off right today, the Indiana Soybean Alliance has given me and all of my friends  4 Indiana State Fair tickets each to giveaway on our blogs to our readers!

So here is how you enter:
Real Time Web Analytics