Second bunch of hay in shed

storage area starting point

The second pile of hay is in the barn.  Everything ran the way it normally does for me.  My help showed up on time and we started to clean out the hay area.  Once the chutes were maneuvered out the door I had him jump in the pickup so I could drive the hay over to the house.  Amazingly, the truck started fairly easily.  I had to drive into Pilot Rock and weigh the truck on the scales.  We needed to know how many bales are in a ton.  I drove to town and my help (further known as Mr President) went back to the barn to finish cleaning it out and getting it ready.  The truck weighed 5150 lbs (done a couple of weeks ago), full of hay it was 12050 lbs.  90 bales weighed 6900 lbs or about 77 lbs/each, 10 ton of hay = 260 bales.  There are currently 180 bales in the barn.  I need another 80 bales.  I was pulling away from the scale when the truck started to die.  Truck ran out of gas.  Since the gas gauge doesn't work it shouldn't be a surprise.  I placed a call to Mr. President on his cell phone, I wanted him to bring the pickup and a gas can.  He is the only teenager I know who doesn't carry his cell phone on him.  I ended up walking to the hardware store, buying a gas can and walking to the gas station.  The gas station owner let me use his pickup to take the gas to the wheat truck. While I was pouring gas into the tank the cheesy little plastic tube that directs flow fell into the gas tank.  I got out to the house and the truck died right outside the barn lot gate.  Damn thing would not start again.  I tried multiple times to jump start the truck with no luck.  So I brought the new tractor out all 23 hp.  I hooked onto the loaded wheat truck and pulled.  In four wheel drive it pulled the truck.  Mr. President was driving the non-powered large loaded wheat truck with specific instructions to pump the brake pedal to build up pressure so he can stop.  We made a large circle in the barn lot and the chain came loose.  I kept pulling but the path to the barn at this point is slightly downhill.  All of a sudden the wheat truck started to get away and come at the tractor.  I ended up having to dive to the left in the tractor to avoid getting hit by the wheat truck.  I was screaming at Mr. President to "pump the brakes".  He managed to get the truck stopped directly over the chain.  I ended up just going behind the truck and pushed it forward about six feet.  The real work began. 

Ready for more hay.

We started unloading and making the pile taller.  We needed to leave room for the next 80 bales that are still needed.  Once the stack gets taller than 6 bales high it started to get painful to drag those bales up to the top.  Annmarie came over and was talking to us when we found a snake on the truck buried in the hay.  It was a bull snake, Annmarie stayed far away.  I just tossed it on the ground so it could go eat more mice and bad snakes.

My "farm" tractor and its load.

Bales stacked eight high.