[Donn Hewes]

Hi George and Goeff, I like to lift the bar a little as it rolls back, for a sharp 90 degree corner. Leaving ti on the ground is a little hard on the equipment and it is harder to back. Sometime the foot lever is not adjusted to do all that it should, (lifting both ends of the bar several inches). with out this it is hard to operate. If your lift is working right, just try to make the horses work slowly through these tight corners. because I clip so much I have about four different styles of corner that use for different situations. I save the perfect, full stop 90 for opening hay fields. Then I truly stop, before turning and going again. That makes it easier to make those clean corners. Once a field is opened up and maybe 500′ to 1000′ feet long and 100′ to 150′ feet wide I stop mowing the ends and just roll in a half circle with out ever stopping. I just lift as I leave the hay and drop it as I enter. It seems like you are wasting time, but from the horses perspective it is faster and easier. When I am clipping I often practice a rolling corner that is nearly perfect with out really stopping. The trick is to slow just enough with out plugging the mower that you can make the tight controlled corner. I am lucky to be working in nice big open fields. The hardest part is deciding were to cut it at.

[Donn Hewes]

That looks great! Donn

[Donn Hewes]

Locust Lane harness shop is in Romulus, NY. Easy to find on Locust lane between 96 and 414, but no phone there. That might still be a long trip for you. I don’t think most Amish shops are all that familiar with D ring Harness. Will you possibly be adding another horse for a team in the future? I am not sure the D ring benefits you as much with out the tongue applications.

[Donn Hewes]

Clipping a very rough piece of ground today I folded a poor evener on one of my mowers! Two seconds later as I was trying to steer my way home my seat post snapped. All you can do is laugh! That little piece of a seat post is really hard to get out. It was rusted in and I cut the pack rust out with a saw z all and got it moving with a punch.

[Donn Hewes]

Hi Tim, I doubt my Ground drive cart will make the trip as I have already committed to bringing my motorized PTO cart. If it fits on the trailer I might throw it on. I would be interested in working on a project to measure the drying effects of different haying techniques. Probably hard to do it at NEAPFD, but we could just set up some on farm tests.

I think rather than rules a lot of farmers have preferences. Often their preferences are a reflection of the equipment they have as much as any particular hay benefit. A lot of tractor farmers like to bale hay right into the dry early evening ( 7 pm.?) as a horse farmer I hate that. I would rather start raking at noon, and baling at two or three and be done by five. Maybe unload some wagons. If I time my mowing, tedding, and raking right, I can usually make that happen. I like to mow hay late in the afternoon, unless it will be too hot. With two teams and two seven foot mowers it doesn’t take very long to mow what I want usually. Since I am mowing in the afternoon, I almost never ted the same day. It seems to me that if I ted at 3pm or later, there aren’t very many hours of benefit before the evening knocks it down again. This refers to Tim’s comment about maximizing the effort of your horses and teamsters. That is also why I am interested on my larger tedder. I can mow fields (and rake, and bale) that will take me four hours to ted with the grim tedder. If I start at 11 because of a heavy dew I will still be tedding at 3pm. The first half the field had a different drying day than the second. I guess I could get another grimm tedder. I would like to keep my tedding to once, but now that I am using the sickle bar mower instead of the haybine, that may not allways be possible. On a side note my neighbors thought I would be sorry I sold my haybine, but so far I haven’t missed it for a minute.

[Donn Hewes]

Hi Mike, they will also have a MC 2041 which is a traditional guard with ledger plate. On a well tuned mower these guards will work well also. On the double guards I have been using this year I been seeing a little clumping of chewed grass caught between the top of the knife and the guard. Some times this leads to plugging and sometimes it doesn’t. It seems to be more common when mowing in wet conditions as things looked clean in dry conditions. (I know it sounds weird but I have been doing a lot of mowing in wet conditions.) I have taken the knife out and used a cold chisel to open the guard just a little bit. Some of them had less than a 1/16 above the knife. Now they all have about 3/16″ . As you can see I didn’t open them much, but I think I made them run better. I have also been experimenting with the L600 adjustable hold downs a little. When you have the first hold down on the second stub guard it is too close to the knife head. Even if it doesn’t appear to hit it, it will when the knife is pushed back by the hay. Solution is to cut the inner end of the clip right off. Just the piece that covers the back edge of the knife. Those back edges of the clip sometimes clamp down hard on the new knife. Possibly the knifes are thicker? I have been using a grinder to grind the under side just on the ends were the they cover the back edge of the knife. I am seriously considering starting to cut those off all the hold downs. I will try and cut a few off some time this week and see what they do. I have been running two mowers through tough conditions and they have worked well. I think my double guards with the super seven (large teeth) is pulling the easiest of all, but it did have one day where it wanted to plug in heavy wet grass. I think opening those guards fixed that, but I will probably find out this week end. Donn

[Donn Hewes]

It is really hard to make rules, as the moisture in the grass, soil, and air all figure in how fast it will dry just sitting there. I don’t like to ted or rake with dew on it (one exception: when it is already too dry, maybe mid summer, I will start to rake before all the dew is gone) . I have had days were I spend hours tedding just to realize the hay in front of me is just as dry as the hay I have been tedding. Other days you don’t ted and the hay never is really dry enough to bale. I have made 1200 so far, but they have been like pulling teeth. One lame horse, one flat tire on a hay wagon, one knotter fixed (knock on wood) and most hay was rained on once. I have been mowing on predicted rain just so I could ted and bale on predicted sunny days. The barn is filling fast though!

[Donn Hewes]

PTO cart update, Not working too well with my new larger hay tedder, This winter I bought a New Holland 17.5 foot tedder. Maybe it is too big? but I have friends pulling the same tedder with the I & J. The hay is heavy and wet, but that is what you want a tedder for. It works great for a little while and then it just starts to drag the wheels and pile up the hay. I think I will try to add some weight. It is hard to go back to the Grimm ( a good tedder) after you have tried something 18′ wide! Made a lot of hay this week.

[Donn Hewes]

Pole barns have the potential to make wonderful homes. As far as rodents go, it is true of any low built structure, slab on grade, etc, that attention must be paid to closing the siding to framing to slab connection to not leave an easy entry point. I recently helped a friend with out much money, and no building experience, design a barn / home, built with an Amish crew constructing a 60 x 36 pole barn from local larch. We used store bought trusses for ease and convenience. In the living area the walls were wrapped in tyvec and sided with larch board and batt. A 2 x 4 stud wall was constructed inside of the posts, after fiberglass insulation was hung to fill the 6″ space. Then the 2 x 4 space was insulated, before dry wall. This 10″ wall is very tight, warm and beautiful. There are a high ceilings of planed poplar. Lots of light from the south.

As for straw bales. Those homes can be built many different ways. Mine is built with a more conventional stick framed wall. They would work as well in a pole constructed building. Just some thoughts. Got to run.

[Donn Hewes]

Hi Erik, How is the rice coming? Should be a good year for rice and ducks! I got my first field of hay rained on yesterday day. I have a lot of photos at my web album. They are full resolution and easy to down load from there. A few have captions, but most are pretty obvious. Help your self. Let me know if I can help. Donn

[Donn Hewes]

Geoff, Those rivets are really a pain. Perhaps someone knows an easier way, but those inner and outer plates are well worth changing if they are really worn. You need to get the outer shoe up side down on an anvil or the like with a bolt sticking up or the like. If one person holds the rivet head on the bolt, another can work a ball peen hammer or hammer and punch. I have done it alone but find it much easier to do with two people. The inner shoe is even worse. Without taking the pins out there is no easy way to get pressure directed at the rivet head. On the under side there is little room to hit the rivet and I use a large punch. Those pins do sound tight, Odd because most pins are too loose. It must be rusted in there. For the raising and lowering mechanics to work right, plus to allow the bar to float lightly over the ground I think you shouldn’t need to pull it to the ground.

[Donn Hewes]

Hi Julie, I am not a parent and so probably have more way to screw this up than I even know. Fortunately my personality never led me to consider not doing something for that reason. The baby monitor was the thing that allowed you to consider going out in the first place, right? Now it is just a question of how to respond to it when called. Unhook the single horse from what ever it is hitched to. Take the horse to the customary place to tie it up. If it has a halter on tie it up and go. if not change the bridle to a halter and then go. If my wife called to tell me (she would have to yell because I am getting a little hard of hearing) that the house was on fire; I would quickly unhook from the equipment I was using and go put my horses in the barn. Then I would deal with the next issue in that order. I hope I can say all this just to give you some other ways of looking at things. I really don’t mean any offense.

[Donn Hewes]

George, That is the kind of science we need! I will be interested to hear how it goes. So far it looks like another year for challenging mowing. The grass is growing like crazy and no where need dry enough to walk in the fields, much less make hay. Now all we need is some one with four different knives and we will really be getting some where.

[Donn Hewes]

I set up this knife as a little bit of a test, but I doubt it is a very good test. Three knives with different sections would be a better test. They all mowed well if very wet, heavy conditions yesterday. All the plugging was do to not having a grass board on and a new teamster.

I have used the serrated sections fro years, both top and bottom serrated, I have never sharpened the top serrated and they still mow good after many acres. I have touched up the bottom serated ones with the angle grinder and a thin cutting wheel. That has worked well too. I am only touching them once or twice a year. I believe these teeth are much harder steel than some of the older smooth sections, and that is why they need less sharpening.

The super sevens look cool, but will they really cut grass better than anything else? Stay sharp longer? Don’t know. One of these day I will make up a knife of them. On a side note I recently built a center cut mower (still working out some bugs) with all stub guards and smooth sections. Lots of hold downs, It seems to mow very well except where there isn’t enough room under the end of the push bar.

[Donn Hewes]

often your first hold down will be over the second or third guard to allow for the knife back travel. Some hold downs are tall enough to get closer to the inside and still not effect the knife. Stub guards that don’t have a close fit to the knife don’t mow as well as the regular guard, but remember most of the time one or two of them is out of the grass any way. My won preference is two stub guards and with that I have never needed to move any hold downs from their normal spots. I just finished a little mowing, nocking down a pasture and teaching intern to drive a mower. Tall and heavy and soaking wet, with no grass board and we still didn’t plug to much. Nice running machine with all new guards and hold downs. The knife is a mix of top serrated bottom serrated and super seven knife sections. They all seemed to work well today.

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