Back Home by Chris Hardie
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I am thankful in many ways for growing up and moving back to the farm but also appreciative of not having to stack hay bales anymore.
Any hay that our small group of animals needs now is done in large round bales that I don’t have to lift or move.
While it’s been a few years since our barn has been used to store hay, the memories of putting up bales is as deep as the layer of chaff that covers the floor of the mow.
Our oldest barn was built by my great grandparents in 1926 after their first barn was destroyed the previous fall by a fire that also took their house. It was a stanchion barn on the ground level for dairy cows with room for hay on the upper level. The barn was expanded in 1970 when my parents moved to the farm.
Modern equipment and balers today make short work of haying, which was not the case in the 1930s. My grandfather put up hay loose in the barns. The hay was cut, raked to dry and then loaded onto flat wagons. At the edge of one hill field on the farm are the crumbling remains of a hay loader, a piece of equipment once used to stack the hay onto the wagons.
The horse-drawn wagons were backed into the upper part of the hay barn on a sloped driveway and hay forks were lowered from a pulley on the ceiling. The forks grabbed large chunks of hay and they were pulled by rope to either side of the barn and then released to the barn flow below.
There were four hay chutes – two on both sides – that were opened from the lower part of the barn and the hay was dropped down to feed the cows. We still used the chutes to throw down hay bales when I was young, feeding each bale to three or four cows, depending on the size.
The hay forks – which haven’t been used for at least 75 years – still hang from a wall and the pulley, rope and track system below the top of the rafters is still in place. The rafters are bowed in a few spots from the weight of the hay.
Each side of the barn could hold about 1,400 small square bales if they were stacked right to the roof. On a perfect day with the right weather and no equipment breakdowns – a rare occurrence to be sure – and with the right amount of help, we could fill one mow in a day.
The last time I put up square bales a few years ago, I unloaded and stacked most of the hay by myself. It was a far cry from the small army we had decades ago. The right amount of help consisted of two unloading the hay wagon and at least three in the hay mow – one to take the bales off the elevator – and two to stack. The closer you got to the metal roof, the hotter the temperatures – which often reached triple digits.. Any fresh air movement became blocked by the bales.
Proper stacking was important. The bales needed to be tucked tightly together because each level became a floor as you walked across it. If the level had spaces between the bales, it was easy to trip or stumble as your foot went through the hole.
We took turns driving the tractor and empty wagon to the field where the hay was being baled. For a few years we also had to stack them in the wagon, but Dad bought a baler that automatically fired them into the wagon, which saved on some manpower and time.
In between loads of hay we hydrated in the milkhouse, drinking cup after cup of water. On brutally hot days we would hold our heads under the faucet and let the cold water run over the back of our necks.
At the end of the day, the cows still had to be milked, a two-hour job that felt like it would go on forever.
Haying was hard, demanding work. The stubble would scratch and cut your skin. Even with wearing gloves, the creases of your fingers would be rubbed raw by the end of the day from lifting the twine that held the bales together.
It was a job that took the entire growing season, as we would fill several barns with thousands of bales to feed the livestock through the winter.
Today there are only a few old bales scattered around the mow and as much as two feet of chaff from years gone by.
But if I close my eyes, I can still hear the clattering of the elevator chain, I can smell the fresh hay and I’m transported to 50 years ago when life seemed much simpler.
Chris Hardie spent more than 30 years as a reporter, editor
