Brenda, you do such a good job filming. You get all the right shots which makes it such a pleasure to be in the field with you guys and your horses. Great mics too, we don't hear any wind which is such a pleasure. Please tell Steve Young Horsemanship channel about your mics. It's a great channel but the wind noise makes it so you can't watch. Thanks, happy farming. 😊
I took my mom to a couple of appointments the past couple days, down in Detroit and one halfways between here and Detroit. Both times we passed the same sections of hayfields. It's been cut and rolled, some has been wrapped in plastic. It was comical when I said, "Hay!" and Mom looked at me and asked, "What?" I told her, "Hay!" and pointed at the fields. She looked at the fields, laughed, and said, "Straw is cheaper. Grass is free." She said that's what they always said as kids whenever a kid said, "Hey!" 🤣 By the way, she has your calendar hanging by her door to keep track of all her appointments. It's the right size for that! I enjoyed this video as always 💕🐎
MY GOODNESS BRENDA, YOU SURE GET YOUR EXERCISE DAILY FOLLOWING ALONG JIM AND HORSES!! I BET SOME DAYS YOU PROBABLY WISH YOU WERE IN AIR CONDITIONING WORKING AS A NURSE AGAIN WHEN ITS HOT AND DUSTY OUT!.
These videos are history lessons showing the way things used to be done. Technology is great and all making things easier but there's no heart and soul. Thank you, much appreciated!
My Dad used to cut hay with a 7’ sickle bar mower behind a Farmall 200. In 1969 we had such tall hay that was beat down by heavy rains and so tangled that he couldn’t cut it. He broke down and bought a Hesston 310 hay bone. I admire your perseverance.
When I read the headlines of this video, I thought, "Well, maybe Jim is exaggerating a little", but then about three minutes in it showed us that the hay really was as tall as the horses. Amazing !!
Excellent job on filming, Brenda. Also like Jim's voice-overs to explain to us what's going on in any specific segment. Really appreciate the time you take to show us these videos!
This is a great video. I didn't have a true appreciation of what you were talking about regarding all the aspects of making hay. To me, making hay is like me cutting my grass but on a humongous level for you. Seeing you both in the field, hands on, so to speak, wow. I now see it is a BIG DEAL making hay and dancing with the weather. Thank you, thank you. Jim, at the beginning of this video, I felt bummed out with the weather and what you wanted to get done. The hay looked like a concrete wall to me that you and your team were up against. Brenda, thanks for the sunny day and your positive nature. I am so glad it is down. Looking at the field now, it looks like a monumental job ahead for you if you want all the hay bailed and in the barn.
hi jim, and brenda so,so, nice to see you both. So nice to see lady,and bill out making hay. jim, I think draft horses are the best. the hay is thick, it rained yesterday here in nova scotia. say hi to trudy, and abby for me please, they are both beautiful ladies. god bless you all, stay safe ..jim dartmouth ,nova scotia ,canada.
Hi Jim and Brenda. have been watching your channel for 2 yrs and first time commenting. enjoy the sounds of farming with horses. today learned what tedding means. educational and enjoyable channel. thank you!
Me,too !! Relatively new viewer (about 1 year, approx.) Love the content and the family !! Now watching daughter Abby's channel, as well !! She's certainly a spunky young lady with determination !!
Enjoyed your quality visual and sound production, especially since the quality of the sound compliments the tasks and makes you feel like you are walking right along with you filming the horses! Very enjoyable.
I'm impressed by the way that cutter bar handled that tall tough grass; you must have spent a good deal of time making sure all the little blades were sharp, and the moving bits oiled. I'm thinking you may have done a video concerning this? I'll have to go to your channel page and scroll around so I can watch it again. As always, thanks for taking us along. Spending a day in the hayfield looking at horse rumps beats sitting in an office to make a living any day of the week, in my book! btw, do you know for sure if Lady is settled? Also wondering--will this be her first foal? How old is she? We used to have our mares bred occasionally, and there's just nothing like having a new foal around. Best of luck with the breeding! I'm so looking forward to seeing your plan succeed.
Not be a smarty about this, but to bad the corn wasn’t as high as the hay. Makes sense on mowing before a rain to get a jump on the hay making. One thing about farming, is that where you lack in some areas you gain in others and varies from season to season. Thanks for the ride along, enjoyed it.
Hi Jim and Brenda, I cut hay this morning ,but not with horses. I can smell that canary grass just watching your video. We went on a nice hay ride last night with my family. My grandson did a great job driving the horses for the first time. Good luck with the hay,hope the weather holds.
Wow, great idea to cut the jungle right b4 the rain, that's a nice jump on thing and the day after the rain looks great. So much work but your really gett'n after it. Seems like you did a nice job sharpening the sickle Jim , it's cutting real nice from this vantage point. Dang , Good job. Do'n the best you can.
Hi, thanks for taking us along. I remember watching my dad cut hay using our two mules Kit and Pet. Yep, I’m old lol near 80 The horses are so beautiful. Good job videoing.
PS I'm from northwest England in the county of Lancashire our main weather is rain and then drizzle may to June was our main hay making time mainly but nowadays its hayledge , unfortunately not so many horses working here today which is my main attraction your vlog
Great job. .work well with the teams/horses. .well trained. .I grew up in No Dakota on the farm/ranch. .our neighbor old bachelor Oscar Anderson farmed with a team of four horses across. .we rode our Welsh ponies over to visit. .the huge BLK horses were always gentle. .Oscar would laugh at us but enjoyed our saying Hi. RIP Oscar!
My Dad would have us kids go with a pitch fork and pull the hay away from the back swath, and the center, sometimes the ends too! There was 5 of us, so one kid at the one end, and another at the other end! We had a JD 53 60 with a #5 mower! Nice mowing regardless! We had a horse drawn kicked type tedder, we put a hitch on it to use it with our Farmall Super C!
This is a good example why farming equipment has changed, hopefully improved over time. The older mowing equipment, by it's design, has a lot of limitations. More modern equipment, whether it be sickle bar with a reel to help move the hay through the machine or the newest rotary mowing equipment, they are all designed to overcome problems with plugging while mowing various crops. I have mowed with equipment similar to Jim's, using a #5 John Deere sickle bar mower tractor mounted and I have used many types of newer equipment and there are tremendous differences in ease of operation. They all do better with well informed operators, but the older equipment depends much more upon operator skill and technique, usually learned by lots of seat experience on the equipment. The older stuff, in general, has a lot more limitations that must be overcome by the operator for successful, trouble free outcomes. It also helps a lot to have someone assist with training. Some things might never be learned by experimentation and trial and error no matter how long you operate a piece of equipment. Jim most certainly has to be a person of tremendous patience and determination to farm with horses and antique equipment. Nick, North West Farmer
Jim and Brenda please remove this if you think this inappropriate . ... Sometimes convenience and efficiency comes with a price. When a corporation owns the rights forbidding me to repair my equipment it seems just a step from me becoming a pork producing serf that has to obey a corporation to farm any longer.. I think of the poor farmers in India who've lost their Heritage seeds that they had raised for Generations to only be allowed to raise seed produced by the gene Giants that have patented the seeds and forbid them from saving any future seeds - along with being prevented from saving seeds the incredible rates of farmer suicides because "progress" has become a one way street with simple technology lost and loans a servitude paradigm. I think true convenience comes with the ability to understand the equipment you're using or even the horses you're working with so you can keep them in good repair and healthy. It takes a lot more involvement yes instead of disassociation. I'm speaking for myself and my family. My oldest sister swore at one time it would be a really dark day before she would choose to live in the country. In my area the hundreds of farms and Farmers I knew of have been Consolidated into three groups bought up by corporations. The farmers and their descendants now work low wage jobs or have been herded into cities to provide cheap labor for corporate heads who make over a hundred to a thousand times more than they do per hour off of their labor. Jim and his family may work hard but they have far more choice in many respects than the hundreds of homeless families I see in my city daily some of which are working two and three jobs but can't afford rent. Jim is something rare in the circle of people I know in this current life. He is a producer not simply a consuming unit to enrich shareholders that live in some distant City or other country. I sincerely doubt that he's being fully paid in dollars fairly. That value has been concentrated to benefit someone else. But I believe there are benefits that transcend dollar bills and surface convenience that are real that Jim and Brenda are living. I wish the larger society would picture them as rock stars and the football heroes they are instead of relics of a primitive way of doing things. The skill that they demonstrate to live Definitely makes them a cultural heritage resource we really can't afford to lose. Wade Davis an anthropologist associated with National Geographic would point to Jim and Brenda's knowledge as an insurance policy for mankind's survival should we lose major components of our current technology. Look no further to see what happens to a 21st century society if they were to lose electricity for 3 weeks as they have in Sri Lanka. A complete disintegration of their society for having a power outage. There are so many ways that can happen to us as the way we live is so fragile without intrinsic resilience. Mega droughts to tornadoes to earthquakes nuclear accidents even pandemics...
@@benbrown8258 I am 80 years old and have farmed most of my life. You have an interesting take on things going on in the world and life in general, but I must admit your lengthy ramble leaves me somewhat confused. There were no recommendations made as to how 21st century society should go about correcting all of it's ills, which should be the most important part of the discussion. I have some feeling you are generally out of touch regarding farming as it exists presently and don't know much about the lives of those of us that make our livelihood attempting to feed this country and portions of the world. We farm because of the life style, our attachment to the land and the enjoyment we get from the work we do, it has always seemed quite simple to me. Nick, North West Farmer
Thanks guys for another good video. How is lady and colts doing ? I hope and pray lady does good this time around. And I hope the colts training is going good and they take to there jobs with no trouble. It's good to see you'll again. I really like that every time I get on and watch a video. It reminds me of the old home place on the farm were I was raised.
Was cutting the same type hay yesterday across the St. Lawrence from you folks . Use a haybine now but well remember the "challenges" the sickle mower offered, especially in this stuff....haha. Certainly lots of hay in our neck of the woods this year. Always enjoy your videos. Thanks.
bonjour Jim et Brenda thanks for the vidéo. it's always calming to watch you two working together in the fields. it's the same here in the south of France, but with tractors. i can smell the fresh cut grass.
I second the motion...Cathy's comment with your filming Brenda! Great 👍eye! I do wish a series on all your horse- drawn implements would be part of your filming road / farm?film map.
That's a nice stand of reed canary grass. Here in Wisconsin it provides a lot of northern pike spawning habitat in the spring. It often grows along lakes and wetlands and in the spring is flooded. Adult pike lay their eggs on it. During the later part of the 1800's and in the 1900's there were huge areas of this grass along the shore of Green Bay and farmers used it as a source of food and bedding for horses and cattle. I suspect the water table is very close to the surface of the land where you are farming as it often grows on ephemeral wetlands (lands that are wet in the spring and then dry out to some degree in the middle of the summer and in fall).
I used to mow with horses (Belgians) at my grandfathers farm in the Netherlands (I'm 56 years old now). He said not to mow the last few passes at full width, so you don't end up with a too narrow last pass in order to avoid plugging (it didn't always work out though 🤨). Obviously back in the day farmers didn't do 4 or 5 cuttings a season, so it is not unusual the grass is taller. Very nice video!
A lot of times if you cut the hay and you get a rain on it right away when it starts to dry out it takes the sap out of the stems of the hay sometimes faster because the end of the hay does not heal over as quick so it lets the juice out when it starts to dry
Beautiful job,,. People don't realize all the hard demanding work farmers do,,and around the weather...golly this was a challenge....hugs from Seattle visit...xx
I really enjoyed hay making done it a lot of years not with horses I've used the same meowing machine but converted to a series one land rover from the right hand side with my dad for a number of years until we got a tractor can only watch l would of loved to do it with horses stay safe from Halifax England 🇬🇧
Never used horse equipment but our old tractor mower worked same way. Just ran off PTO instead of from wheels turning like yours does. Used hay rake just like yours
Well looks like you will have plenty of feed for the winter Watch all your vids and enjoy them also I enjoy watching you on your sawmill I have a woodmizer LX55 and I do love to run that thing but have to watch the heat I am 90 and it really gets to me,
Hello Jim and Brenda thanks your video it's great. I can feel your mood cutting hay down and it pluging up frustrating. That tall grass is that what? Have you thought of a ground drive baler to pull with your horses? Do you know where can get at least the front part? Again lots of fun watching this if I lived closer would be fun help out although my time too is very limited. Have a great day.
Hi Jim and Brenda, I just wondered how many bales you make each year? Your mower's left wheel which is driving the cutter bar looks really more worn out. Maybe you can weld on a new profile for better traction. Wish you some dry days .-Chris
Enjoy your videos so much. The mower works like a new mowing machine. If I remember correctly it takes different sections and guards than modern JD or IH cycle bars.
I've never seen the hay this heavy here a bit southwest of you as it is this year! If we can just get the weather to cooperate, we should have a large crop of decent hay. Canary Grass! If we could get it short enough it's decent feed, but it's usually standing in water then!
Thank You. I was just thinking that is going really fast looks like a motor. Then Brenda said it was a motor on the machine turning the hay over to dry.
always good too watch this show jim my question as a young ladd on the farm in the mid 60's I was told the softest finest hay was for the horses, this stuff would be thick stalky stuff so is it for horses or cattle
The hay in this video is not good for dairy cattle. Long stemmy hay has lost most of its protein by the time the seed heads appear. Fine grassy hay is for working animals (ie. milk cows), while the stemmy hay is good enough for animals that just need a full belly.
Hi Jim and Brenda, I watched a show recently about the strongest horses in the world and the Suffolk Punch was in the top 20, they said that they were brought over from Europe in the turn of the last century for farming in the US, and also said there are only 47 registered here, was wondering if yours were?
Terrific stand. What kind of grasses are these? Around here we only get Foxtail and Johnson grass to be that tall, but those are not desirable. I use a McCormick # 7 with a 6 ft. cutter bar, but in order to get somebody to bale my hay I agreed the last couple of years to have him cut it, too. My mower has a dolly wheel which takes the vibrations off the horses' necks.
Jim, Brenda, thanks so much for all your efforts for these videos. Those big horses make it look so effortless to pull the implements. I'm curious... On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being just a stroll down the driveway, and 10 being pulling 3 HUGE logs out of the forest, how much effort do the horses expend pulling the various implements around the farm? The tetter(?), the grass cutting machine, the hay wagon, etc. Again, thanks!
Jim are you getting tired of this crazy weather one day it's hot next day it's cold and then it rains and then it gets hot and muggy I'm getting so tired of this weather and I guess you're having the same problem they're in New York as we are here in Iowa
Would it not help if you brazed some cleats on those wheels? Just out of curiosity, but when you have gotten this behind and the hay is this thick, would it not be a good idea to have a disc mower for the tractor and just get caught up? I don't mean a new one, just one good enough to get the hay down in a pinch.
Jim has made several videos where he has commented about his mowers getting worn/well used from years of mowing. Everything is expensive now, especially new horse drawn equipment. Would Jim's motorized cart handle a PTO tractor drawn sickle mower? Would this even be a consideration? Lodged crops are hard to harvest either with horse or powered equipment..
