How Do You Bale Straw? ~Mercer Mondays
Some of you are farmers, but many of you don't have much connection to some of the forage work I do. I have my own hay making equipment, but I spent about a month working for a farmer using his much more expensive stuff. I did a large number of jobs, but most of my time was spent baling. Baling is a love of mine. If everything works, it's an easy job. #Inmydreamsthingsdontbreak
When combines harvest a field of grain, they leave a swath of straw behind. The baler comes and picks the pieces of straw up, and smashes them into thousand pound rectangles (in the case of the square baler I was driving). I can make around sixty bales an hour. Each one is pushed out of the baler by the next bale being made and dropped in the field. A stacker will come later to pick them up and make large stacks on the edges of the field.
Baling usually begins in the later morning and runs to late evening, and sometimes early morning because of the need to have moisture levels low.
I did not get good images or video, but below you can see my "office", and the video does show baling during the day, at night and some raking.
