OK, let's talk about hay

[Mobuck]

I started baling the hay on this farm in 1967. I'd been helping in the hay field since 1959 but 67 I was working alone. Older Brother was drafted and Dad had a full time job. Mom worried about me and I had no drivers' license so she'd drive me to the field and help me get started and just watch that I didn't wrap myself up in the AC Roto-baler. I baled the hay every year since then, bought the farm and moved here in 1980.
Lots of things have changed during that time. My equipment is bigger, faster, and requires much less effort. I don't have to lift bales by hand anymore(couldn't if I wanted to matter of fact).
Health issues took me out of the cow business about 15 years ago so I built a business around providing top quality hay for particular buyers. Sometimes it's worked out and sometimes not but I'll keep doing this as long as I can. I have as pure a stand of brome grass hay as you'll find anywhere and horse people like that.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

Just remember "You gotta make hay while the sun shines"

When I was 16-17 in 1959 I was the hired hand on a farm. The owners Son and I were the same age and went to the same small town school. I would ride my motorcycle about 5 miles to the farm after school.
During school I would work the fields then help with the milking and other chores and have dinner with them. $25.00 a week.
After school was out I worked by the hour wage of .50 except baling hay and filling the silo then it was .75 The bailing was, the Dad drove the tractor pulling the bailer and a wagon. Son pulled bale from baler and I was the stacking guy of the 100#+- Alfalfa bale
We would then haul to the barn and Son and I would stack the bales after the owner sent them up on the elevator to the haymow
When filling the silo I was the inside guy that leveled the silage, closed and sealed the silo doors. Nasty job with all of the stuff falling down on you in the HOT silo. Baling the straw bales was a piece of cake after tossing the alfalfa bales around in hot June and July. You need the straw to spread around in the barn for the livestock to walk around and bed down on during the Ohio winter. In spring the livestock go to pasture and you clean out the manure and spread it. Another nasty job.
Its called small time farming.

 

[Mobuck]

Jim, the overall work hasn't changed but the processes are less physical. Same stuff in 2023 as in 1963 just more mechanized. On the other hand, I can roll and wrap the equivalent of 16 of those 100# square bales at a rate of 12-15 per hour. Now days finding a teenager who would stack bales is like finding a diamond in a goat's _ _ _ !!
I was just talking to Grouch Attack about this post. One of the notable comments was: After my older brother(and 3-4 other local boys) was drafted, no one in our hay crew had a drivers' license. I can't imagine turning such a young group of boys loose to do this sort of work in today's world.

 

[Johnnu2]

In the late 80's I was a middle aged man, still helping a 'gentleman farmer' stack bales as a way to say 'thanks' for letting me use his farm to hunt the mighty Eastern woodchuck. When I first started helping them (there were some 'locals' working for him), they were were stacking in an old (very dilapidated/dangerous) barn without any light. The next weekend, I brought larger flashlights and hung them around the barn; everyone thought I was a genius . I believe that those bales were sold to horse people for about $2.50 per bale.

By the late-90's the rich artsy people from Manhattan had established a very strong weekend and summer presence; I used to sit in a hedgerow watching the Mercedes and Ferarri's blasting up the two lane highway past the farm. Eventually it became to dangerous to hunt 'chucks'. without hitting an "artist". It's OK, I was getting too old to sling bales anyway..!!!

J.

 

[Wvfarrier]

We used to bale our own but now we purchase all our squares. I wish someone local had alfalfa but it doesnt grow well here

 

[Wyandot Jim]

At the time I was working on the farm I didn't have a car drivers licence only a MC licence. You could drive a tractor on the highway without a licence which I did a lot of.
This covered bridge was located next to the fields I worked and I drove the old prewar (no electric start, started it with the flywheel) John Deere A across it many a time. It is still there and is known as Swartz Bridge and is located in Wyandot County Ohio, sadly the farmhouse is no more.
Owners son and I caught quite a few Carp and Bullhead Catfish out of that river. He also had a 52 Ford and free farm gas and we had a Lot of fun in that ole Ford. Girls became more fun than farming.

Built in 1880, it spans the Sandusky River.

 

[contender]

As a teen,, I worked several small jobs when I wasn't working our family restaurant. One was loading the bales of hay.
After 2 days of that,, my Dad looked at me & said; "I'm proud of you for the hard work,, but now,, maybe you understand what I mean by; "Work smarter,, not harder" and will get a good education."
He was right!!!!!!!!!!!! (Again!)

 

[Ale-8(1)]

I spent the entire summer after graduating from high school working on a custom baling crew all over the surrounding county. All the above bring it all back.

 

[Dave P.]

Hay... lots of work, either bale it or buy it, break out the conveyor and move 1000 or so bales into the loft.
As time passes, drag it back out of the loft, feed it to the stupid horses who basically convert work and money
into crap. Then more work to pick the aforementioned crap out of their stalls and load it into the spreader. (more work)
Take the mechanical dung flinger out into the field and splatter it back onto the ground so you can grow more hay
and do the whole cycle of stupidity all over again.
You get extra points for baling or lofting if you pick the hottest day of the summer and the baler or conveyor has
squealing bearing!

 

[Wyandot Jim]

A real dirt farmer doesn't screw with feeding hay to pets. Hay is fed to money making livestock. You also splatter that dung on fields that grow a money crop.
The only horses I knew of were the Trotters and Pacers my Grandfather trained to pull the stupid Sulky around a race track without breaking into a gallop.

 

[Dave P.]

A real dirt farmer doesn't screw with feeding hay to pets. Hay is fed to money making livestock. You also splatter that dung on fields that grow a money crop.
The only horses I knew of were the Trotters and Pacers my Grandfather trained to pull the stupid Sulky around a race track without breaking into a gallop.

Trotters are about as dumb as Olympic race walking.
In some countries they at least get to eat the horse if they piss you off enough.

 

[375supermag]

Back in the mid 60's my dad used to rent my older brother and I out to work on a farm. His name was Mr. Martin...I suppose he had a first name but we were taught to address adults as Mr. or Mrs., never knew his given name.
Cleaning out cattle barns, loading wagons with hay and straw bales and then stacking them. Hard dirty work but the farmer's wife fed us well and we grew up strong.
All the money went to my father...never gave us a cent of it.

 

[Mobuck]

A teenager matures quickly when put in this position--both mentally and physically. I credit these early experiences with carrying me through the years of tough times that followed. I can look back and chuckle at some of those early years as I struggled to keep all sorts of semi-junk machinery operational and how much I appreciated getting better stuff to work with. Years before I was old enough to vote or buy a beer, I learned the right way to be a man and how much personal integrity was worth. Not something one learns in school for certain.

 

[crstrode]

Back in the mid 60's my dad used to rent my older brother and I out to work on a farm. His name was Mr. Martin...I suppose he had a first name but we were taught to address adults as Mr. or Mrs., never knew his given name.
Cleaning out cattle barns, loading wagons with hay and straw bales and then stacking them. Hard dirty work but the farmer's wife fed us well and we grew up strong.
All the money went to my father...never gave us a cent of it.

Sounds familiar. I'd be directed to drive the mower from place to place and cut the neighbors lawn, weeds, alfalfa, etc.

One day I finished up a neighbor's yard when Mrs. Belt came outside and handed me five quarters, I tried to turn it down but she insisted, saying; "that is what the hired men get paid for an hour's work".

I never told Dad

 

[Watertender]

Trotters are about as dumb as Olympic race walking.
In some countries they at least get to eat the horse if they piss you off enough.

Over 40 years ago I was delivering a load of lumber to a racing stable and was told to ask the trainer where he wanted it. The guy was running a horse and sulky around the track. I walked up and flagged him down. As I was asking, the horse kept leaning towards me and trying to bite me. I backed up and he let it keep coming at me while he was laughing at me I told the guy that if the horse bit me he had better have the number of a dog food maker because the horse was going to end up there. I dumped the lumber in the middle of the track and left it there. The trainer made the mistake of calling my dad to tell him what I said. Dad told him that he was lucky that the horse didn't bite me or I would have done what I told him I would do and then dad hung up on him