You know the Fourth of July is Near When…

1. We make and then eat these treats.

2. My little cowboy finds a bag of crepe paper and does this:

And then we all have to try the crepe paper taste test. (Except for Nate, he refused stating he’d already done it once and didn’t ever need to do it again.)

4. Nate practices chipping while waiting for night to fall before baling hay.

5. We take lunch to Dad who is on the tractor.

6. My alarm clock goes off at 3:30 AM (that’s not a typo) for four straight nights so my husband can get up and do this and be back to the house by 7 AM, shower, and go to work.

Okay, here’s what actually happened:

(First a little lesson about moisture and baling hay.)

Dew softens the hay enough to keep the bales together and makes them nice and compact. The leaves stay on. If the bale is too dry it falls apart, the leaves fall off and you are left with bales of sticks. The livestock aren’t so keen on bales of sticks.

If the hay is too wet, it will get moldy. If it’s really wet, the bales will get so hot they’ll start on fire and burn the barn down. A lot of rain not only makes it too wet but all the protein leaches out leaving a poor quality feed.

Last Wednesday it finally stopped raining so Nate started baling at 7 PM, stopped, moved enough bales to get the wheel line back on and broke the riser in the process. Risers are like big spigots rising up out of the ground at regular intervals  across the field. Hoses and pipes are hooked from them to wheel lines and sprinkler pipe. Opening the riser turns water on for the line it is hooked to. Breaking a riser means you can’t turn the water off. (Picture Old Faithful.) Nate had to shut down water for all of the farm’s irrigation system, meaning no crops got water that night.

Thursday morning he got up early and fixed the riser before work.

Friday it rained. No baling.

Saturday night he baled hay.

Monday night he baled from 9 PM to 11:30. It was too dry to bale. So he went to bed after setting the alarm for 3:30 AM.

Tuesday at 3:30 AM he baled until 7 AM. He fought the baler for three hours. It was still too dry. There was no dew.

Tuesday night Bishopric meetings and no baling.

Wednesday at 3:30 AM he started baling again but was back in bed at 5:00 AM. No dew, still too dry to bale. We were graced with a light rain during the day.

Thursday morning he got up at 3:30 AM and baled quite a bit before the baler broke. It was too dark to work on it so he crawled back into bed at 6 AM. Thursday night he baled from 9 PM until midnight. There was a heavy dew making the hay too wet to bale. (It was 80% humidity when he quit.)

Friday (today)  he checked the hay at 7 AM but there was still too much dew. The dew burned off around 9:30 AM and he was able to finish baling the field. Yahoo! First crop is baled. Now we can celebrate the fourth of July.

Yep, this is what the fourth of July looks like at our house.