It was a bit more of a rough day yesterday. Things started out okay, cold for the soak, but still mellow. I got R to school mid day and once I was back home I managed to get myself out to work on the hay bale.
I found a piece of plywood that I screwed down to the trailer and leaned on the tailgate of my truck.
The ramp was very important to help keep the hay from piling on the ground, I was able to slide flakes of it in and pile them atop each other.
I got the first load in the truck which was about 1/4 of the bale. I emptied out one of the truck bed liners that I have laying around and then emptied the hay into it. It keeps it off the snow and ground and might be possible to slide the whole thing into the sheep pen if there is still snow on the ground.
The first load out I was backed up to the trailer again and loading up the second load. This got me to about 2/3 - 3/4 of the bale unloaded.
I had just backed up to the second truck bed liner and as I stepped out of the truck I saw these two roosters in full fight mode. It is always silly looking to me their feathers on their necks as they get all fluffed up and fighting.
I unloaded the second load into the liner which fit just right. My truck bed is the same size as the liner so I knew it would be a good fit for the volume I could carry.
The last of the bale got loaded into the truck and I backed into the sheep pen and piled their cage really high to finish clearing the trailer off. I had to make sure to get it cleared as I had to go get grain this morning and would NOT have been able to do it with just my truck, the 4 barrels ended up brim full and super heavy.
After picking R up from school I hooked up the trailer once back in the yard and managed to get it free from where it had gotten stuck. I swept off all the nice fine alfalfa dust and shoveled it into tubs for them to munch on.
I got the barrels loaded up and strapped down for this morning and parked the truck.
My hay tarp was just able to fit over the two piles of hay as the tarp had some frozen ice in it that kept me from opening the tarp all the way. It works though and it will keep moisture off of it.
I spent a nice while soaking after the hay move and enjoying a beer. My body was destroyed after moving the 1300+ lbs of hay and the soak was super nice.
I spent some time working on scales on the mandolin. Tabledit it a pretty cool program and I have a boatload of tabs that I got from the Mandozine site. I found that I really like the sound of the blues G scale, the 0, 3, 5, 6 has a really nice sound to it with cool depth. I watched a video by Dix Bruce about the magic mandolin shape and how easy it is to work a few chord shapes up and down the frets. I have a lot to learn but this made a lot of sense to me, now I just need to learn the four shapes fully.
I was still super worked and was starting to fall asleep in our night soak. My wrist is still sore and it made sleeping a bit rough last night from the tossing and turning every time I felt it shoot the pain.
I was out of the house before 5am this morning and in town getting grain in 5 F temps. I have to unload the 4 barrels today, figure out a good cover for the hay cage in the sheep pen, start packing for cave camping this weekend again, do some gentle practice on the mandolin so as not to aggravate my left wrist, and it's my mom's birthday today so this evening we are going to go out to dinner at Master's in Deer Park.
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Glad that hay bale deal is over. Hope the camping trip goes well. :))
Careful with the tarps, leaving it under once it warms up a little could cause it to spoil :( ... And it looks like getting it was a lot of work!