BIG job done!

Peter Rideout

Member
Messages
1,662
Location
Nova Scotia, 45°N 64°W
700 bales of second cut hay, all up in the barn by 10 am this morning, thanks to 5 able young guys (in the hayloft) and two wise old owls down on the wagons :thumb: I have a rule that no one under fifty is allowed to set the pace!!
That's a major item crossed off my to-do list!! A month ago I was getting worried we wouldn't be getting any, due to the dry summer.

Decided after that we really need a hammock around this place:D
 
yup i too have played in the hay loft and i was the oldest one, the young bucks wouldnt want to be in there to hot not always but most would rather avoid it..
 
Oh, man, that brings back memories! What grampa didn't bale, he stacked. I still remember how tired I was when he'd pick me off the top with the tractor forks at the end of the day.
 
Helped my uncle do a little baling, and spent a summer at college working on a dairy farm. Lots of baling, lots of milking. Made me appreciate the value of getting a good education... :D
 
We actually do this a lot easier than we used to. We don't make our own hay - no economy in having that gear for an operation this size.
We get two lots of hay. There's 2-300 bales of first cut timothy for the old horses, supplied by our firewood guy (Mr Curly Maple, as some of you have come to know him:D), just a warm-up.
Then there's about 700 bales of the second cut grassy stuff for the sheep. With the second cut, you get a lot less stem, which they don't eat. So, it's more expensive, but a lot less waste. This comes from friends of ours, dairy farmers who immigrated from Holland about thirty years ago. They are hay-making masters.The hay comes right to us in the bale-thrower wagons, accompanied by one or two big strong Dutch boys in their 20's, so haying consists of 2-3 hours of heavy work unloading and piling back.
Maybe round bales are in the future for us, but we're not really set up for it now. No way to store it or feed it out, the way the old barn is built.

Back on the farm when I was growing up and into my 20's, we had 6-8 Quarter Horses around most of the time. Hay grew in the rotation with the main cash crops and was made with some worn-out gear left over from a beef cattle operation. The old baler did not leave fond memories. I definitely like our current method a lot better. I'm still ready for the hammock though:)
 
I remember hay season as pure misery with hay fever / asthma depending on what was in the air. I was flipping bales while Dad went to get medicine flip 3-4 bales sit on the next one until I could get enough oxygen to move on. Never did much during the season because of it.
 
Some of the best times of my life were spent helping on the farm next door. Bale and haul hay all day, eat a big hearty supper and take a dip in the pond later to cool off. They really were the good old days..I miss 'em.
 
1.5 to 2 cents a bale from field to barn. Good money for those of us too young to drive back in the e50's-60's... Now I help with 50 bales and my shoulders quit...

Garry

YOU GOT PAID :eek: I did it because, well I had to. I loved the smell of fresh cut alfalfa but also hated it as it met going from day light tell dark. But I could go to town after 10:00 pm sometimes. I also always got stuck on the trailer behind the baler and then in the barn when unloading. Great times and wouldn't trade it for anything.............No REALLY :)
 
For a few years when I was around 9 to 12 years old, we lived on a ranch with a few small (1 or 2 acre) alfalfa fields. My dad would mow it and rake it into windrows, then one of the locals would come over to bale it for us. I was still a bit too small be very productive tossing bales in the pickup truck, so I'd drive the truck in granny gear while my dad did the heavy lifting. Between the two of us we'd stack it in the hay barn (to eventually feed to our horses). I remember lifting a lot of bales, but more than that I remember the cool hay forts I'd make in the weeks to come.
 
I also remember the cool forts we would build in the loft.The part i remember that wasn't so cool was, being in the caged wagon behind the kicker baler.That baler would throw the bales to us and then ofcorse we would have to stack them before the next one hit us in the head. Also ounce in a while you would get a bale that had a snake, or a bees nest in them. Now that wasn't funny at all.
 
we made 30,000 square bales one year when we had the land... we lived in the hayfield that summer. all in all, it's still better than working in an office, just can't make as much $$.....it's also a young mans' game...
 
You bet I got paid it wasn't our hay.. And though it was a lot of fun at times we weren't doing it for fun...

And no I didn't get paid for working on our 80 acres which was 30 miles away.
 
I never did much haying... in my teens and early 20's my butt was too light to handle the bales much... (at 21 I was 6'1" and only weighed 140 lbs... and that was a year after boot camp (I went into the navy at 133 lbs)).... but I've picked up a few watermelons in my time... the first year of my teens, we had about 90 acres of melons in the field... all black diamonds, sugarloafs and congo queens... big melons that weight 30-40 lbs each... that summer my dad, his partner and his partner's three sons(ages 15, 11 or 12 and 10) and me (age 12-13) picked up all 90 acres... we had to put the 10 year old on the tractor and the 15 year old did the catching... the rest of us picked up melons and put the on the trailer.... the first truck we loaded was buried up to his axles in the field.... we loaded the rest of the trucks on the road....
 
You bet I got paid it wasn't our hay.. And though it was a lot of fun at times we weren't doing it for fun...

And no I didn't get paid for working on our 80 acres which was 30 miles away.

I got to help the neighbors because they helped us for FREE 5 to 6 different neighbors not one of them paid me, just the way it was neighbor helping neighbor. Best times of my life, just wish I new that back then.........:rofl:
 
Top