I made most of my spending money after high school hauling hay.
At a dollar an hour, I didn’t pile up nearly as much cash as hay, but, I didn’t need much – just enough to put gas in Dad’s ol’ pickup truck and buy ice cream and soda pop on Sunday afternoons.
Most boys growing up on a farm today don’t buck many square bales. They may learn how to operate a bale spike on the back of a pickup truck; but, many don’t learn the fine art of heaving 60-pound bales into a hayloft.
If just the thought of tossing bales off a wagon in the heat of summer causes you to break a sweat, consider the lot of the fellow in the loft, where the only air that moved was thick with dust, chaff and mud daubers, and the heat radiating down from that tin roof would cure jerky.
Either suited me better than what I was used to, though. Dad didn’t have a baler. We put our hay up loose, one pitchfork at a time, until we filled the loft. Then we started stacks on the ground.
Square bales were a luxury. We were about the only folks in the neighborhood who didn’t bale our hay. So, I didn’t mind hauling hay for the neighbors. Square or round, I liked the idea of hauling and stacking it in bales.
Of course, I take some measure of satisfaction in learning how to handle loose hay. Dressing down a stack is a lost art, just as is moving it with a pitchfork.
It’s not all muscle, you know, that allows a fellow to move load after load into the barn. If it were, he’d be worn to a frazzle after a half-dozen forks full. It’s all in the leverage, the rhythm and motion of the body.
It’s the same with small bales. I worked with a few fellows who just killed themselves trying to throw bales to the top of the wagon. It seems they never figured out that you don’t throw ‘em. You push ‘em, first with a knee and then with your arm.
It gets a little more complicated with round bales. I always liked to haul round bales, because I liked using a hay hook. It made my arms longer. I worked with some guys who never got the knack of that, either.
I’ll have to confess that I never did graduate to the big leagues of hay hauling. I never left the county for a job. I never even left the neighborhood. Our neighbors kept me about as busy as I needed to be during haying season. I helped haul in bales from the same alfalfa fields three or four times in a summer, helped fill the same barns year after year. It was almost like working at home, except that I got paid for it.
I was lucky to have been born when I was. If I’d have been born a few years later, there would have been no hay to haul. About the time I went off to college, big round balers started showing up. One-by-one the neighbors got bigger tractors so they could pull those big balers. Soon, there wasn’t a little square bale in the neighborhood.
Now, the folks who put up a lot of hay tell me that they went to the big balers because it just became impossible to hire help. Kids, they said, just didn’t want to work in the hay any more.
I don’t know how true that was then, but I’m pretty sure it’s a fact now.
These days I’m not too keen on it, myself; but, that’s mostly because I’m much older. I might still be worth a dollar an hour, though, maybe even twice that, if I could use a hay hook – but only for an hour.
Maybe longer, but don’t call me when you put your hay down. I’m in no hurry to find out.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
