It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep my life simple. As technology expands on every front, people like me (those that are reluctant to change) find ourselves operating machines and devices that we can’t even comprehend how they work, much less know how to fix them when they fail to function properly.
Fifty years ago, baling hay was a fairly simple procedure. The old square baler needed to be greased daily, the knotters needed to be cleaned of straw and trash occasionally, and we made sure the drive chains were at the right tension. When a chain, gear, or shaft would break, we repaired or replaced it and continued to bale hay – pretty simple and straightforward.
My round baler is in its sixth year of use and, fortunately, had never caused me any problem whatsoever, until last week. With such a wet spring, finding a weather forecast with three consecutive days of “no rain” had everyone in the county cutting hay. On baling day, I hooked up to the machine that cost half what I paid for my first farm, and checked out everything that I knew, greased it up and headed to the field that I had to get baled that day. When I turned on the electronic monitor that controls every single function of the high-tech baler, a flashing light informed me that the bale ejection gate was open.
I got out and inspected the tail gate and it sure appeared closed to me. I ran it through three or four cycles of the hydraulic system and, each time, it looked, sounded and felt like it was closed, but the monitor insisted that it was open. I called the service manager at the dealership where it was purchased and told him my problem. “Sounds like the tailgate sensor is out,” he stated, trying to assure me that it was a minor and inexpensive part.
I’m sure I sounded in panic-mode when I asked, “Can I still bale with the open light flashing?”
“Oh, sure,” he confidently replied, “but you’ll have to do everything manually as far as wrapping and tying, because the automatic stuff won’t work when the computer thinks the gate is open. We do have sensors in stock here at the store.”
Great. Judy was more than happy to make the 50-mile round trip for the replacement part while I began baling. She wasn’t even out of the driveway when I encountered another problem. The little high-resolution graphs that show which side of the baler needs more hay, in order to make a uniform bale, were both non-functioning. Not knowing a thing about the internal workings of the monitor, I assumed it was connected to the open light and continued to bale, reverting back to my days with the very first round baler I ever owned, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t make fun of my misshapen bales.
When Judy returned with the new part, I quickly replaced the old sensor but was dismayed when I started up again and the open light continued to flash and the graph still didn’t work. I continued to bale while calling up the service manager again. “Would it be possible to get a technician out here this afternoon?”
“Oh, wow, I doubt it,” was the reply. “Everyone and their dog are in the hay and we’ve got calls coming in by the minute. How about tomorrow?”
I was already starting on the next field the following afternoon when the service truck pulled into the field. The knowledgeable repairman checked all the sensors connected to the gate and the graphs and could find nothing wrong. With a contemplative look on his face, he walked over to the cable connection between the baler and monitor and carefully unfastened it. There are exactly 18 little wire prongs that are supposed to fit neatly into exactly 18 little holes, but three of them were bent and did not make the connection. “Here’s your problem.”
With a pair of needle nosed pliers, he carefully straightened the bent prongs, plugged it back together and everything worked. I guess I had been in too big a hurry to plug it in the day before and had inadvertently bent the sensitive electronics. Operator error.
The good news is that the bales I made the day before, relying on my eyes instead of the pretty little monitor graphs, looked better than any I’ve baled in the past 10 years.
