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We’re getting better at attaching  the bush hog (rotary cutter) to the tractor. I think we managed to do it in less then 45 minute yesterday and the includes disconnecting the front end loader (FEL) and the backhoe. There are some tricky turns and space issues involved when doing all that and leaving the equipment in the barn where it is out of the weather. I’ll attribute about 1/2 of the good speed to practice with taking the FEL and backhoe off during the fall, and the other 1/2 to the assistance of epe and her mom, it’s pretty amazing how helpful it is just to have someone hand you a wrench or dropped bolt when you’re holding a 30lb steel three point hitch arm up under the tractor to connect it. After it was all attached we then centered and leveled the deck.

I took it out for the initial run up/down the hill north of the house to make sure it was all working, then epe did a few runs. I finished off the easy parts of that field this afternoon. I have about an hour left on the west side, and then a few more hours on the right side where the trees are more numerous.

Maintaining the field is important to keeping them from overgrowing and undoing all the work we had performed 2 years ago. Wood/brush pressure on idle fields is fairly high in the northeast, it only takes a few years to go from idle hay field to briars/thorns and then more difficult trees like ash and black locust.

Oh and I should mention I like to keep the bucket on the loader down when we’re cutting, as we go along it fills up with several pounds of grass seeds and a fairly huge assortment of crickets/leaf hoppers/bees/spiders and other unidentified bugs ;). It’s pretty disgusting to look at, but when I dump off the crawling pile of seeds near the chickens and guineas the happy noises are wonderful.

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