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Fourteen Years of the Pasty Cam ^{Printed on Recycled Internet}

Of the last 14 years on this day, only one was a night shot. Which?

2006

Good Tuesday Morning!!
That would be 2006.

I'll take 2006 for 300

Is that your final answer, you old Nomad?

Love the hay baling picture! Dad had that bale thrower option on his baler...broke more bales than what it helped with.

The night was shot in 2006 and bled lightning. (Wow...that's pretty darn poetic.)

J.T.: That bale thrower looks like a fun machine. Has anyone ever stood on it to see how far they could be tossed?

Good rainy morning from MN....AGAIN!! Guess we don't have to water today.

Love the slideshow yet again. Been to Canyon Falls. My hubby hiked quite a way past them. Lucky he didn't encounter a bear or something. And Lighting the Night is awesome. I could have sworn it'd be something Dan would submit. My hubby said the kicker balers were awesome, especially for those who had to stack it, lol.

Have a great day.

Alex, not even my brothers dared to ride the bale to the wagon. Dad's bale thrower was set at *cannon* speed. But we all enjoyed riding the bales up the elevator into the upper loft of the barn. To think, today that would be considered child abuse!

And yet, we all survived....

Janie, that sounds like so much fun!! Riding the bales up the elevator!! Enjoyed all the pictures today!! (As always)

Hey, I'll bet the Capt will have some news for us on the earthquakes in Washington and Virginia today. The news says it was felt in Detroit and maybe even as far west as Lansing. I didn't feel anything here in Lansing; I thought that was my stomach growling.

Guess this quake can't be explained.

http://news.yahoo.com/quake-rocks-washington-area-felt-east-coast-181550612.html

The weather this year has done nothing but damage.

Wonder who could explain it besides Al Gore? :)

I consider it a blessing that I was able to spend summer vacations at my grandparents' dairy farm in Bruce Crossing. Soooo much better than spending the summer in Deetroit!

I vaguely remember the early days, when I was just a young 'un; they were still using huge draft horses and putting up loose hay. Oboy, those big ol' horses yoosta scare me! They were darn smart horses, though.

When I was old enough to lend a hand at haymakin', the draft horses had been replaced by an ol' 1040 Ford tractor, but they were still putting up loose hay, and I did some slingin' of pitchfork loads of hay onto the wagon, then atop the load, spreading the hay to make a stable load. (Talk about a "tippy canoe"!) I yoosta drive the tractor pulling the rope hoist to move huge bundles of loose hay into the hayloft.

Distributing the loose hay in the hayloft was the nastiest, worst, dusty, hay-seedy experience of it all. Anyone for a sauna? You betcha!

Some time later the New Holland baler was added, making it much easier. No airborne bales, though, we had to manually snag the small rectangular bales (50-100 lb.) from the chute with a hay hook, and stack 'em on the wagon in a criss-cross fashion. Then off to the barn, where stacks of bales were hauled into the hayloft with artfully placed grappling hooks (later one at a time into a hay elevator/conveyor).

Although both options were available, the bales were bound with twine, not wire. (You knew that's where the term "haywire" came from?)

The great advantage to the small rectangular bales, of course is that they can be handled by a single person, compared to the large round bales (660–880 lb.) as seen in the July 27 edition of PastyCam which can only be manipulated by some specialized machinery, certainly impractical in any but large feedlot operations.

There is also a risk that hay bales may be moldy, or contain decaying carcasses of small creatures that were accidentally killed by baling equipment and swept up into the bale, which can produce toxins such as botulism, which can be deadly to non-ruminant herbivores, such as horses. When this occurs, the entire contaminated bale generally is thrown out, another reason some livestock owners continue to support the market for small bales!

(Ooops, wrong place! Message moved to Cam Notes by author.)

Emigrant museum in Finland;
http://www.siirtolaismuseo.fi/index1.htm

All variations of hay bales, small squares, large squares and especially big round bales are prone to mold, baled up mice, snakes, etc.. I know, I feed hay 365 days a year for many years now! I have had more mold and other crap issues with small squares and big rounds than the big 8x8x3 squares. Not to mention my hay man is extremely fussy with the hay he makes, as he feeds his own A.Q.H.A. cutting horses his own hay as well as selling his hay to me.

The earthquake in Virginia is actually not that difficult to explain. That area is part of what is known as the Central Virginia Seismic Zone. I will explain more about it and what are called intraplate earthquakes when I have finished my dinner.

By the way, I love the hay baler stories. Reminds me of when I was younger on a dairy farm in the Maritimes.

Dr. Nat (Drnat):
"I love the hay baler stories. Reminds me of when I was younger on a dairy farm in the Maritimes."

I hope it was "Merry Times" in the Maritimes! <grin>

Dr. Nat...hay baling was the best times on the farm! The bales always made good structures to hang targets on as well as feed. I miss those days growing up on the farm, I still live on part of our family farm today. But now a neighbor guy mows and bales our fields for his use. So I still have limited hay baling days yet when he comes to bale! Combining corn was the 2nd best time.

I wrote a nice long explanation about the Central Virginia Seismic Zone and today's earthquake on the new computer... but before I could post it, the computer crashed. So you are stuck with the shorter version because I don't feel like retyping all that.

The seismic zone is an area of weakness because there are ancient faults left over from millions of years ago when the Appalachian Mountains were formed. Stress can be concentrated along the weak areas in the crust, causing an intraplate earthquake like the one today. There have been quakes in that part of Virginia recently. I know of one in 2009 and I believe there was also one in 2003, but those were smaller and thus did not make national news.

When Paul gets home, if he can fix the new computer, I'll post the better explanation.

Thanks for the explanation, Dr. Nat! Appreciate the 'short' version and am hoping maybe you can recall the longer version as well.

Always nice to have our own resident expert explain what is going on!!

We used to put all our hay up loose in the old barn first and then when that was full the rest would get baled. Spreading the hay in the barn after it's dumped was hot, sweaty and picky work. And boy those scratched up arms and legs stung in the suana later on. One year when it was just my sister and me loading bales on the hay wagon (not like in the picture), we had the best, tightest, most perfectly stacked hay wagon you ever did see. I doubt if I could do that work now. We sure didn't need gym memberships back then.

It’s rather interesting. At work today I was writing a new earthquake lab for my natural hazards class. Then my colleague stuck his head in my office and said, “Check the earthquake monitor. You’re getting more data right now.”

All right… concerning the earthquake:
Most earthquakes occur along prominent faults at plate boundaries. Earthquakes along the San Andreas fault, or the one earlier this year in Japan are examples of that. Today’s earthquake in Virginia is an intraplate quake, one that occurs in the middle of the plate, not at the edge. (The boundary of the North American Plate is in the middle of the Atlantic). Although these earthquakes are not as common as the others, they also are not unexplainable. They are caused by stresses that are concentrated along ancient zones of weakness in the rocks. The Central Virginia Seismic Zone is one such zone. That part of North America was once a plate boundary (back when the Appalachian Mountains were formed), which left many ancient faults in the area. I know a small earthquake occurred in that area in 2009 and I think also in 2003. Today’s quake was just bigger than those, so it made the national news.

Another thing about eastern earthquakes that is interesting is that they usually affect a larger area than similar magnitude quakes in western North America. This has to do with the structure and composition of the rocks. East coast rocks are older, colder, and tend to be less fractured, which allows seismic waves to travel through them with greater ease.

I am not a seismologist and thus no expert on earthquakes, but I hope this cleared things up a little. You can also look on the United States Geological Survey website:
U.S. Geological Survey

As you can see, Paul is home and fixed the computer inside of about 30 seconds and put fancy links in my post for me. I don't get along with computers.