I have been remiss in my bloggage of late. I can offer no excuses beyond the usual culprits; laziness, lack of focus, lack of time and lack of anything to write about other than bitching and whining. I'd rather spare you that.

So, I offer you more tractor porn.



Ok, technically it's not tractor porn, but it is haymaking, albeit in a technologically confused fashion.

If I remember correctly I lifted this image from Yesterdays Tractors quite some time ago. The hay crew are either Amish or Mennonites, if they're not then they are very confused people.

The little cart imediately behind the horses carries an engine (probably a Deutz air-cooled diesel) that powers the baler (a Hesston inline).

The big trailer behind the baler is a Bale Buggy. The advantage to it is that you don't have to pick the hay up. The disadvantages are that you need at least two of them (they only hold about 80 bales) and they leave a gawdawful mess when you dump it. Somebody still has to hand-stack the pile of bales after you open the back door and drop them. I would be worried about breaking the strings on half the load myself. Still it is a huge time and labor saver. I'd like to try one if someone around here had one I could borrow.