HAYING SEASON ON THE FARM

July has arrived this year after a blistering June which ended with temperatures in the 90s. Growing up on a farm, the muggy nights and heat waves during the day were part of farm life.

The scorching summer weather meant it was haying season. It meant that farm kids had the hot, sticky job of handling and storing those prickly rectangles of bound hay, tied with twine and full of itchy hayseeds, called bales. There is a particular smell to a haying operation. It’s the inviting sweet scent of dried clover and other grasses, tinged with the scent of gasoline from farm equipment. The work is hard and tiresome. We handled hundreds of bales kicked out from a baler, pulled by our Farmall C tractor.

If we were lucky, the baler was hitched to the tractor and the hay wagon hooked behind it. We only had to pull the bales up onto the wagon bed as they popped out and stack them four layers high before hauling the load to the barn for storage. Two-string bales can weigh anywhere from 40 to 75 pounds, depending upon the type of hay, how seasoned or dry it is, and how the baler is set to compact them.

Before we owned a hay baler that fed the bales onto the wagon, they were dropped onto the ground. Then, we’d have to toss them up onto the hay wagon first before stacking and carting them away.

In the barnyard, an elevator with a chain mechanism and paddles took the bales up to the very stifling mow where they were…(wait for it)…restacked once again. If I was lucky, I had the job of feeding the elevator below in the hot sun and would get a break from working the even hotter mow. Needless to say, we all vied for that open-air spot.

My father was particular about how he wanted his hay stored. The bales had to be stacked cut-side down in the mow. I always felt we were giving more attention to this hot sticky—and somewhat finicky—stacking routine than I cared to give.

Why cut-side down? Because the strings/twine will always be on the side of the bale when you look at the stack. It is said to also deter mice from gnawing on the twine, but it also allows moisture to run down through the stack to the bottom layer. Much

later, baler twine was treated with a chemical that discouraged barn mice. I do admit, come winter, when you have to throw bales down the shoot to feed the herd below, it was easier to walk on a layer of hay uniformly stacked.

Someone once asked me if I miss summer and haying season on the farm. A friend, who’s a farm kid as well, put it more eloquently than I ever could: “Be careful of the past, it always looks better than it was.”

Here's hoping July and your summer is a good one!

 

  

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Riding a Stone Boat

If you’ve ever planted a garden or dug in a flower bed or walked on a plowed farm field, you know how those pesky stones poke up unexpectedly from the earth. 

May is the month when farmers plow, harrow, and sow their crops here in the Northeast. Winter, and the snows it brings, has finally disappeared. Now that rainy April has shut off the water spigot in the sky, the drier fields await attention, and their only gift to the farmer is stones. 

When the last glacier came down from the Arctic region, it kneaded stones into the soil at varying depths. And when the mile-high ice sheet eventually melted away, it deposited rocks which had been embedded in the ice. When the fields are plowed for planting, the frost action often lifts these rocks to the surface. 

For many farmers, this meant the back-breaking work of picking these stones before planting could begin. How did they do it? With stone boats, also called a drag or skid boat. 

A stone boat is a long, low, flat sled-like contraption, often homemade and consisting of wooden planks mounted across a pair of wide runners similar to a sleigh. Some are built with a turned up nose to make dragging it across the field easier. It’s surmised that this upturned prow reminded early farmers of a boat gliding through water. The stone boat in theory glides over the soil.  

In the early days, stone boats were pulled by horses. Later, they were dragged over the fields by tractors. Our stone boat was hooked to our Farmall tractor with chains, probably the same hitch that was used when my father farmed as a boy. 

I remember picking stone with Dad on a field where we usually planted corn. The back-breaking technique of the job has not changed over the years. You pick up the larger stones and place them around the outside of the boat and throw the smaller ones inside. 

Once the stone boat is filled, it’s taken to the back or low end of the field where the hard work of touching each stone is once again needed to unload the boat. I should mention that some thought does go into this simple tiresome process. You must decide where you’ll deposit the stones before you begin. Stone boats can’t be backed up. 

If you take a drive into the country, you’ll often see these “stone piles” alongside farmer’s fields where a piece of land has been cleared. However, stone piles have now dwindled as construction companies request the crude stone to use in building houses and replicating stone walls.

Is there any joy in picking rocks? Only one. Once the boat is loaded, you get to hop on and ride the boat to the stone pile where you unload it. 

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