Combining and baling rye straw

Yesterday family friend Edward was going to combine his rye on a field in the county, so Jimmy and "crew" were to bale the straw that remains after the grain is harvested. Jimmy made a comment that the quality of the raking wasn't as critical on straw, so the determination was that maybe Dwayne and I could help...

The first task was to get the equipment to the field which was about 4 miles away - I was driving the pickup truck behind Jimmy and Dwayne driving two tractors. Jimmy had the baler and accumulator (the accumulator would sometimes get to swinging pretty wildly that kept the semi truck from being willing to pass at this point in the trip) and Dwayne had the rake.

This link shows the field in satellite view on GoogleMaps, where "Lee Hy Paving" is indicated to be. Let's just say that we would not have "happened" upon the field on our own!
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4451437,-77.0925007,2398m/data=!3m1!1e3

Edward and the combine coming around the corner of the field.

After Jimmy took the rake on one round of the field to ensure the settings were correct, I got on to try my hand at raking for the first time. Realize that I was supposed to be remembering the tractor-driving lesson/experience from a few days ago (http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2017/06/driving-tractor.html).

While I was raking, Jimmy started baling, and Dwayne went for a "ride-along" in the combine with Edward. He took a video: https://youtu.be/ljyv4qR3rdk - note the encounter with a groundhog hole at about 1:30 into the video... when I first hit one while pulling the rake, I thought the tractor and I might disappear into the hole! I guess if I were more experienced or observant I would see it coming - every once in a while I would, but then one would come up by surprise that kept me on my toes.

After Dwayne finished his "ride-along" on the combine, he took over the raking task.

  After a number of bales were on the ground, Ricky and Regina (first string) arrived - Jimmy and Ricky returned to the farm to get the trailers and loader to collect the hay, and Regina took over the job of baling.

Hard to see, but that's Regina baling.

There you can see the equipment a little better... it probably would have been easier baling if the people doing the raking had done a better job of separating the raked rows of straw... but third (fourth? tenth? hundreth?) string operators aren't the best!

Jimmy and Ricky loaded two trailers and a truck full of bales of straw, and one of the trailers has been unloaded today. The first string (Jimmy, Ricky, and Regina) have headed back to help with unloading the other trailer and truck, and to return to the field to finish the baling and collection of the bales this afternoon. The third string operators (Dwayne and I) are awaiting a call if we are needed, primarily probably to ferry equipment around.