Friday, July 30, 2010

Farm Equipment Fridays: Raking hay

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After the hay has been tedded and dried, it needs to be raked into big piles. 
The rake does exactly what it sounds like it should do.  It gets pulled behind the tractor...
raking hayfield 1

It has these tines that spin around and grab the hay...
raking hayfield 2

And the tines pull the hay into a pile just to the left of the tractor/rake combination.
hay rake 1

So after the rake passes by, there’s a long line of a pile of hay left behind.  This long pile is called a windrow.  Depending on the thickness of hay in the field, sometimes one windrow gets raked again with more flat hay to form an even bigger windrow.
hay rake 2

Once the windrow of hay is thick enough, another windrow is started.
raking hayfield 3

And on and on, around the field it goes.
raking hayfield 4


Here’s a close-up of the rake coming…
raking hayfield 5



Here it is!!
raking hayfield 6


And there it goes…
raking hayfield 7

Here is our lower field, partly raked into windrows.  I think this looks pretty neat from the birds-eye view.
raked hayfield


I would have loved to give you a shot of the whole lower field raked and ready to bale.  But, before the raking was finished…
baling hay in a raked field


The baling had started!

More on the round baler next week…  That is by far the coolest part!


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

1 comment:

  1. I'm impressed you were able to find that elusive window to get hay cut, dried, and baled! We have yet to mow the first waterway to bale. YIKES! Can't catch three days without a rain or low enough humidity! Maybe an interesting winter for the mooies!

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