It occurred to me during my walk tonight that we’re well into haying season, and I don’t think I’ve ever told you about haying.
My brothers and I didn’t do a lot of heavy farm work growing up, but the one labor-intensive time of year was haying season (straw baling too, but the tolerances were greater with straw. Also it was much lighter to lift).
Up until sometime in my childhood, my dad used to make hay more or less the old-fashioned way, cutting it and drying it in the field, and stacking it loose, either in the barn or in a shed, or (when space ran out) on the ground under a tarpaulin. We had an undersized barn, and so usually ended up stacking some hay outside. This is not a good thing. Wet and vermin get in. You always use the outside hay first, because it goes bad first.
Here’s my dad and my grandpa, some time before I was born, working on a hay wagon.
But sometime in the 1950s dad acquired a used New Holland baler, and moved to that somewhat more efficient haying system. Below is the best picture I could find of a New Holland baler. The color’s right, but ours was older and not as fancy as this. The one pictured here actually tosses the bales into the hay wagon on its own. With our baler, the bales were gradually extruded from a chute, pushed out by the newer bales being assembled after them, and you’d pull them out one by one, with the help of a hand-held hook.
(As it happens, one of our baling hooks had been brought home from England by my uncle, who served in the Air Force there. Its previous job had been moving atomic bombs.)
The hay was first cut and allowed to dry, then raked into wind rows with a specialized, tractor-pulled implement.
You’ve heard the saying, “Make hay while the sun shines.” Weather mattered. Scientific weather forecasting was a godsend when it came, because it was a disaster to get your hay rained on once it had been cut. Rot was sure to follow when that happened.
When the raking was done, you’d go out with the baling machinery. As you see in the picture, the tractor pulled it all. Dad had two tractors, small Allis-Chalmers WDs. Their color was orange. Behind the tractor came the baler, whose front conveyor gobbled up the hay as we followed the row. Arcane and wondrous gears and blades inside compressed the loose hay into rectangular bales, and tied them perfectly with twine which Dad bought in spools from L&M Farm Supply.
(The great danger with a baler was always when the hay got jammed up, stopping the machine. I’m sure the manual said to always disconnect the power take-off before you tried to clear a jam. I don’t think anyone ever bothered with that. The important thing was to have some kind of tool to prod the hay with. Do not use your hands, even if you think it’s safe.
Every town had at least a couple farmers who’d lost a finger or two in jammed hay balers, when the mechanism had started again suddenly and grabbed them. And they were the lucky ones, because they’d managed to get their pocket knives out, open them with their teeth, and amputate the fingers before their entire arms got pulled in. A hay baler could kill a man, and occasionally did, somewhere.)
It was also dangerous to work on the hay wagon, behind the baler. Ours didn’t have side walls like the one in the picture, just a wood frame back wall, because our baler didn’t throw the bales. The man (or one of the two men on the wagon, but one could do it) who pulled the bale from the chute would turn around and stack it neatly.
There was a system to this. The wagon was built to accommodate the dimensions of the bales. You would lay one layer of bales on the wagon floor, neatly like floor tiles, all perpendicular to the length of the wagon. The next layer would go on top, at a 90 degree angle to the first layer. Then the next layer would go down, in line with the first layer. We called this locking the bales. It helped keep the whole pile from collapsing. And up they’d go, until you’d stacked the thing as high as you could reach. If there was a second man, he’d ride on top, and the first man would throw the bales up to him for stacking.
You could stack them pretty high that way, but it was precarious. “Locking” the layers wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes the whole thing would come apart. Usually that wasn’t a disaster, because you’d fall on hay. If bales got ruined, you could remove the twine and run them through the baler again.
The man down below, by the way, was left with just a ledge to stand on, in front of the bales, about a foot and a half wide. If we hit a bump that made him lose his balance, he had to hang on or try to jump clear. Having a loaded hay wagon run over you wasn’t desirable.
By the standards of the 21st century, the whole thing was an insanely dangerous occupation. But somehow we managed not to lose anybody.
When we had a full load, we’d take the hay home, the wagon man (or men) riding on top of the load. It was a welcome break from heavy work.
Once in the farm yard, we’d use a pulley and a trip rope-operated frame with multiple hooks to hoist the bales up into the barn and dump them, six at a time (or was it eight? I forget). After dumping them, they had to be stacked, because we didn’t have room to just let them lie in a heap, like our luckier cousins with the big barn across the road.
Haying time is, of course, the hottest time of the year, and the temperature up in the hay mow was high enough to make spontaneous combustion (of the hay, not of us) a realistic worry. But that never actually happened. Nevertheless, that hay fermented up there, and actually made the place hotter.
And that, children, is one of the reasons I decided to become a writer when I grew up.
Sounds as bad or even worse than digging–or worst of all, dipping–out oil well cellars.
Hot, dirty, and dangerous. Working with computers is *much* better!
I don’t expect that you thought this entry would bring up good memories. This probably comes from my dad preferring my stacks to anyone else’s. My reason for existence during the summer as a teenager was to irrigate, cut, rake, bale, and stack the hay. We had (in Idaho) three, sometimes four, cuttings a summer. We had a Case baler pulled by a John Deere model 40, which my father called a well-oiled machine. (It burned oil, hence, we put a lot of oil in it.)
We stacked our hay outside, not in a barn. I guzzled many a gallon of iced tea. My father drove a John Deere model A tractor equipped with a Farmhand loader, a contraption of hydraulics and cable with which he would pick up the bales in the field, bring them to the stack, lift them up about as high as one would want to go, and dump them on the stack where I would be waiting to stack them. I forget how many layers there were in a stack. I would say about 15. I would make rope out of twine to help me up and down the stack.
Of the three times my father was laid up, one time came when my brother, while feeding the cows, threw a bale off of a stack that hit my dad in the side of one leg and tore a ligament. Even with surgery, my dad limped for the rest of his life.
Years later, in my family’s trips to back to Idaho, my daughter and I would go to an uncle’s farm and sleep over night on a haystack. These have become some of my daughter’s fondest memories (It could also be that my uncle would give her ice cream for breakfast.)
My moment of deciding to leave the farm came during another time my dad was laid up. I was sitting on a milk can, listening to the drone of the milker and waiting for a cow to drop her milk; the decision to leave and go to college was clear and final. That decision prompted my dad to sell the farm. There are times when I stand in my tiny garden listening to all the air conditioners whine that I wonder if I made a fair trade. Thanks for letting me reminisce.
Hay, you two guys pretty much made the act of haying the awful act that I recall… a real bad memory.
I didn’t see, however, in your writings where the hay bales were often over 100 lbs…when dad decided to bale the hay wet even if it did rot in the barn…..
BOY! You guys sure brought back a lot of memories of farm life…. I also recall all the neighbors helping each other out during hay season…except for ours… no one joined in with us….dad was just too…”unhappy” to work for if you didn’t have to.
Also, the neighbors got to have an afternoon snack of fried chicken, cake, lemon-aid, etc… We got warm water….
Yes, besides working with hogs, haying was another reason I chose another career path. My dad still holds this against me to this day….
If you ignore the potential for injury as stated previously, one good thing from this labor was a studly body…. tan with a six-pac of abbs…. the girls loved it…
Yup, like I said… lots and lots of memories…..
The girls loved it, a bit like loving Lil’ Abner?
I confess to having no memories of farm life, and I dislike mowing the yard. There’s probably a room in the Inferno for me.
Somehow I never got the studley body. I came out of the summer as doughy as I started. Which is one of the reason I hated farm work. There were zero rewards for me. It was like a prison sentence at hard labor.
Well, Lars has the perfect description of farming as far as I’m concerned… “…a prison sentence at hard labor.” With the warden able and willing to beat the inmates…..
This post is linked from a post about a crazy video of someone jumping into a hay baler and coming out wearing a bale around his naked body. The post links here to verify that hay balers will kill you.
In short, the interWeb is wild.
Good lord. I hope nobody tried that for real.
He didn’t even jump in the right end.
Whoever made this video didn’t have a mama. Between my mother and grandmother, I knew ever possible way a baler could kill or cripple me. And there was no joking about it. My Uncle John, who was missing four fingers from unplugging a corn chopper, was their visual aid.
And then, he squirmed and with great effort made a dash for the greater story of gore and agony….
There was Uncle Russle who had his bib overalls torn off when they were caught on the PTO shaft connected to the hay baler.
And of course we must not forget Del Phait who lost his arm in the front end of the baler. (He drove the tractor after that. My friend and I stacked the rack. None of us used hay hooks. We used holey leather gloves.
Then one of my neighbor’s little sons who was literally eaten by the baler and did not come out in a suite of hay!
Stacking straw bales never bothered me as much as hay. I blessed the day, when I was in my early teens, that my dad started borrowing a baler that made those nice big round bales from a neighbor. Then we used the loader with a grappler to pick them up and line them up in nice rows near the barn. Lots of driving back and forth, but a lot less grunt work. Easier at feeding time, too. Drop the bale into the round, cage-like feeder, cut the twine off, and you’re good.
But shortly after that, dad decided that keeping cattle was too much work for not enough payback.
Nowadays, some farmers bale the hay before it has dried all the way, and wrap it in plastic. Then some nice anaerobic bacteria start fermenting the hay (kind of like what happens with silage). The fermentation process actually improves the feed value of the hay, and protects it from rotting–as long as the wrapper stays intact. A relative of mine does this. It’s kind of funny to see rows of those big white things in the field; they look like giant marshmallows.
That’s horrible, but thanks for writing it out.
Roy, I actually first saw those big plastic-wrapped bales in Norway. My brother had to explain them to me.
I grew up in the Big City but every summer my folks swapped kids with my cousins in Wisconsin so I got in two weeks of haying every year. I was too young to help when my cousin traded in the old Allis Chalmers small round baler for an Allis Chalmers square baler with the bale tosser on the back. The bale thrower meant we had to keep the bales small, about 40 – 60 pounds, or they would break when they landed. It also meant that we spent all our time unloading, with the goal of getting the empty hay rack back to the field before the next rack was full. Unloading wasn’t easy because they bales were tossed together every which way. It was like unscrambling a jigsaw puzzle.
A fun game we played was to stand in the hay rack and try to catch the bales as they came out of the bale thrower.
As a city kid who got to go help on the farm every summer, it was always a highlight of my year. It was the same for my cousins when they got to come spend a week in the city with us later in August after the second cutting of hay.
I came to this site checking out on that above mentioned crazy video. Never done any farm work, so both the post and comments were really interesting to read… I wouldn’t have thought that haying was easy and extremely enjoyable activity, unless for a change from Big City life as Greybeard put it, but now I can better appreciate the intensity and dangers related with it… Thanks for sharing your experiences!
You’re welcome. You should bear in mind that these are mostly the memories of aging men, and things are generally much easier on the farm these days, at least in this country.
Speaking of danger, my favorite activity as a kid on the farm back in the 60’s and 70’s was riding the drawbar. Farmall 350 or 400, right foot on the drawbar, left foot on the axle, right arm around the back of the seat, left arm on the fender if it was there. Watch out for the PTO shaft 18 inches from your leg. Back then it was a great way to tag along with my cousin. Nowadays anyone who let a kid ride like that could be charged with a crime. Then they got an Allis Chalmers 190xt and I had to perch on the fender inside the cab. Much safer but less fun.
I think that we as a society are trying to eliminate all risk, but as can be seen from these posts, that it is often risk and hardship that provides the memories. Albeit, sometimes not so good, that’s why it is called risk and hardship.
When today’s teens are our age, will they reminisce about the kajillion songs they had on their ipods? Man, what a summer that was!
I’ll just tell them about nearly blowing my eardrums out listening to the radio that was bolted to the tractor.
Phil! YOU had a radio on the tractor????
Yeah, my dad got the radio because he thought that having one would make it easier for him to get me out in the field. His ploy helped, but it didn’t always work. I wasn’t always prompt in my obedience. Can’t say I’m proud of it.
Very glad I never had to do anything worse than haul hay out a bale at a time and feed the horses. *Much* better deal!
Riding the drawbar sounds insane. I didn’t even like riding in the back of a pickup. Once I road on top of a guy’s car trunk from one part of our small college campus to another. I thought the idiot was driving too fast and I felt I was slipping off. Holding a big stack of books didn’t help. So I hopped off to keep from falling, did not have any thoughtful experience with momentum, and flipped onto my back in the middle of the road.
My head hurt so much I thought I might die when I went back to my room, but the Lord spared me.
Riding the draw-bar was a common method of transportation on our farm. It wasn’t considered dangerous or risky unless you got your pant-leg caught on the power-take-off shaft if someone left it turning.
We held onto the back of the tractor seat or the back edge of the fenders if the tractor had them. The old John Deeres didn’t but the old Massey Fergusons did.
Phil and his trunk/arm full of books ride sounds much much more dangerous to me!!
In spite of all my bad memories with my evil father on the farm. There are still great memories of living on the farm in the 50s when the pace of life was slower and it took less to impress us and entertain us. For example: milking at 5 AM each morning, seven days/week, rain or shine. How about walking the beans each day all summer long hacking at those cockle-burrs or button weeds with a corn-knife. And who can ever forget castrating those boar-hogs weighing 600 lbs. or cutting off their tusks with wire cutters?
Yup, those were the days after-all…..
But,Gosh! Does anyone recall life without TV???? The big old Philco radio, (that used TUBES!),used to be the best mode of entertainment. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow do, the Shadow do!!!!!!”
“HI-YO Silver! A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty HI-YO Silver…The Lone Ranger! With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early West. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The Lone Ranger rides again!”
And who can forget that famous line?: “Say, who was that masked man?”
Ah, yes…aging old men….Lars, you have a way with words…………….
Our dear friend and Hay Man was killed last week, baling hay. It jammed & he tried to clear it without turning off the tractor. PLEASE, be careful when using farm equipment. God Bless the Farmers.
Pattie, my sympathy goes out to you. And I hope your words of caution are heeded.
Wow…I learned a lot reading all this. I am a city girl, and my husbands cousin just was killed while working on a farm, baling hay. A neighbor found him inside the bailer and called 911, but it was too late. I could not comprhend how a machine like this could pull a grown man in, especially if he was an experienced farmer. Now I somewhat understand, we all think sometimes we are invinciple and somehow, we can manage to do something quickly instead of following safety precautions. I have a lot more respect for farmers now, their job is very hard and physical, and can be dangerous. My heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones because of it.
I’m sorry to hear of that death. Farming is inherently dangerous, change it how you will. It’s closer to reality than most jobs, and reality is a chancey thing.