When my sons were still at home, moving round bales in from the field was a snap for me. I simply provided them with a cooler full of soda and told them to call me when they were finished. But, once they were grown and gone, the ever monotonous and always hot job reverted back to yours truly and, as I have said in this column more than once, it is the only job on the farm that I don’t enjoy.
When my wife retired, I slyly suggested that she might like to gather round bales each summer. “That looks like fun,” she replied, “if I could use your big tractor with the air-conditioned cab.” Tactfully, I tried to explain that the little, open-station, tractor was the only one available to gather bales since I needed the cab tractor to continue cutting and baling more hay. “Oh, then no,” was her answer.
Needless to say, two years ago I traded in the little cabless tractor for a slightly larger one with a cab, air-conditioning and sound system. Judy now loves to gather bales and can do it for days on end without so much as a minor gripe. Naturally, I’m tickled pink.
Last week, the weatherman predicted heavy rainfall, for one night, with the potential for heavy flooding. Judy was working on two fields, with bales that were in a low-lying area and prone to flooding, if we, indeed, got all that rain. So, since I couldn’t cut any more hay that day, I told her that I would join her in getting the hay stacked in the bale yard. She had already brought about half the harvest close to the bale yard, but had not stacked them because they needed a little more drying time. I told her that I would do the stacking with the big tractor if she would continue to bring them in from the field with hers. “We need to pick up the pace a little if we’re to get them in before the rain,” I said.
As a little side note – my wife is extremely competitive, and I learned, more than 30 years ago, if I want her to do something, all I have to do is tell her that I doubt she can do it, or that I can do it better, or faster.
“I can have all these bales you’ve already gathered, plus the ones that you gather today, stacked in the bale yard, before you can get the rest of them moved in,” I proclaimed.
“That’s what you think.”
I could tell that she had picked up the pace by grabbing at least one (maybe two) gears as she sped back and forth between the field and bale yard. I have to admit that I had throttled up as well, and we were making great progress in beating the rain. As I worked at stacking the pre-gathered bales, Judy would bring in two bales at a time from the field, dropping one from the front-end loader right at the entrance to the bale yard, then back up a few feet and unload the other from the rear of the tractor, before taking off for two more. I would stack those two and continue on with the existing bales.
When it was getting right down to the end and we were both trying to win, Judy had just arrived with two bales as I was exiting the bale yard. As she backed up away from the bale she had just dropped, I slid into that bale from the other side. I unknowingly slid that bale back on to her fork, and began to raise it with my bigger tractor. I thought it seemed a little heavier but I didn’t know what I had done until I looked up and saw her waving her arms frantically. It was then that I realized the front of her tractor was about 3 feet off the ground. After I quit laughing, I slowly lowered her tractor back to ground level and pulled up beside her.
We both opened the doors to our tractors and Judy yelled, “That’s not the way to pick up women.”
She won by six bales.
