Putting up hay the old fashioned way.

[Cornhusker]

Anybody but me old enough to remember putting up hay stacks instead of bailing everything?
When I was a kid, 13, 14, 15 years old, most boys worked in the hayfields all summer.
My brother and I along with a few other kids from our school would go to "hay camp" up in the sandhills every summer.
Sid and Charlie, the "old" guys we worked for would pick us all up on a Sunday and haul us a couple hours deep into the hills.
Monday and every day after that, we'd get woke up right before daylight and go wash up in the metal wash basin outside the cook shack where we ate all our meals.
Betty, Sid's wife was a great cook.
Breakfast was sausage, bacon, eggs, pancakes, toasted homemade bread, about anything you could ask for.
After breakfast, we'd sharpen our sickles and replace any that had broken off, fastening them to the bar with cold rivets and a hammer.
We used old pastic clorox bottles with burlap sacks tied around them for water jugs. Fill them with water and soak the burlap in cold water to keep them cool most of the day.
When we got out to what ever meadow wer were in, we'd check the oil, water and fill the tractors with fuel, replace any rake teeth, sweep teeth or whatever we'd broke the day before.
Most of our tractors were old even then. Ford 8n's, Jubilees etc were our mowing and rake tractors while the sweeps were usually Super Cs, one was a Minneapolis Molene and the stacker tractor was a WD Farmall.
The guys on the mowers would usually be a day or two ahead of the rest of the crew, they'd mow with 9 ft sickle bar mowers and lay the hay down.
The "straight rakers" would follow, racking the whole meadow into winrows.
ONce in a while if the hay wasn't drying, we'd run down the rows with a side delivery rake and turn the rows over to dry the underside.
After it was dried, the sweeps would come in, also the stacker would be moved in and the scatter rakes after cleaning up the previous meadow.
One sweep would stay behind to bring the leavings to the next meadow to be stacked with the rest.
The sweeps (tractors turned around so they were rear steering) had a head on the front, maybe 10 ft wide with long oak teeth and side teeth. the only adjustment was the ability to raise and lower the tips of the teeth so you didn't stick them in the ground or skip over hay.
The sweeps would run down a winrow, zig zagging back and forth to tie the hay together, sometimes they'd haul the hay quite a ways to the stacker.
If the sweeps got there ahead of the stacker, they'd "buck" the hay into bunches, like mini stacks. When the stacker ws ready to go, te sweeps would push the bunches to the stacker.
The stacker had a wide head on it, maybe twice as wide or so than the sweeps.
The guy on the sweep would look to the stacker operator, and he'd indicate where he wanted the bunch on the stacker head.
A good stacker operator could tie a stack together so it'd ride on a stack mover over the roughest country without falling apart.
The scatter raker pretty much moseyed around cleaning up all the dribbles and leavings into another winrow which the sweeps would buck up and take to the stacker.
At the end of the day, we'd all head back to camp, all loaded up in a 46 Ford pickup and a 51 Chevy pickup.
We'd wash up at the wash basin, eat supper, usually steak, potatoes and pie.
Then we'd take turns showering in the old shower house. Wooden floors, the water just ran down between the boards, the water heater was on the outside.
We had a little shack we called the card house. It had a rough table and old bus seats to sit on. The seats were out of the bus we slept in, they'd been replaced with bunks. There were 8 bunks in the bus, two sets two high on each side with about a foot between.
Anyway, the card house was where we hung out after dark to play cards, shoot the breeze, talk about cars and girls and dogs we used to have.
When we were tired enough, we'd go to the bus and rack out. One kid that was there for a couple of years was a really good singer, and he'd sing until he fell asleep.
ONe year we had a guitar player too.
We didn't work on Sunday.
It was hard, hot, dirty work. We worked together, played cards together, got homesick together, occasioinally fought, but for 8 weeks every summer, we were family.
At the time, we were sure we hated every minute of it, but looking back, I wouldn't change a thing.
Anybody else ever go haying all summer?

[Mutti]

When I was a kid we'd go to my cousins' farm in the summer and they would put up some loose hay in the part of the barn over the cows mangers....cut,forked on a wagon and big tong things hoisted into the loft. Most they baled. My biggest memorys were more "city girl shockers"--collie ran in front of the mower and cut a leg off and Uncle Todd went and got the gun and shot her. Aunt Doris in the chicken house barefoot wringing a couple necks for lunch...cooking on a wood stove. They seemed ancient to me at 8 years old but were probably only in their 30's. We always rushed to finish the city milk my mom sent so we could drink raw milk like our cousins....my dad had undulant fever from bad milk in the Phillipines during the war and my mom was deathly afraid of raw milk. She could never get over us using raw goat/cow milk for all our kids. DEE

[xbeeman412]

Yup we put up lots of hay just around the corner from where gleaner was raised. Large irigated alfalfa fields that we had to fight the jackrabits to get a good crop.

Once the hay was stacked and capped it wintered well. Paul Ostgren was my step dad and he had lots of money..15 or more oil wells. His tractors were John Deers 70s and 80s, this was back in the 50s.

Sure did bring back memories. Bit of thread drift now. the wheat harvest was another great time as well.

I think that You are a bit east of that area now. Give my regards to Gleaner.

God Bless.

[piglady]

What a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing. We have a team of draft horses and inherited my husband's grandfathers horse drawn hay equipment. We have a sickle mower, rake, and a thing to pull behind a wagon that picks the hay up off the field and dumps it in the wagon sort of like a convayer belt. we hope to send all of it to the amish this summer so they can restor it. Not sure what you do with a wagon full of loose hay but I would like to use the equipment once a year anyway just for the memories.

[simplefarmgirl]

i dont remember it.. but really would love to g back to that way of life,, i would rather work with horses instead of tractors.. I know everything around us, the world seems to be instant everything,, I would loved to go back in time and live 100 yrs ago

[piglady]

If you have an interest in horses and a place to put them, you really should try it. We absolutley love ours and enjoy working with them so much. If you are not a horse person, I think the draft breeds are the best to start with since their temperments are so much more easy to work with than smaller breeds. Just get a mature experienced team and you can learn in no time. Here is an article and a contact number for a man that can.

http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues...Kay_Wolfe.html

Here is a picture of our girls. Not show horses but there is not enough money to get us to part with them.

[Delinda]

Piglady that is a beautiful team of horses, thanks for sharing the picture

[CIW]

Husker,
My family homesteaded in Brown, Rock, Holt, and Antelope counties.
We'd work our hay and then go help other family members work theirs.
My dad always wanted us to have everything ready to go in the morning. He said in the hayfield, he could get twice the work done before noon that he could get done in the same amount of time after dinner. Full bellies and high temperatures slowed things down. By 4 o'clock we were back in the shop setting up for the next day unless it rained. Then we were usually working by the lights
Momma always brought dinner to the field. Foods similar to what you mentioned.
Those early mornings taught a feller real fast to not be out cattin around at night.
We had two one ton trucks that were stripped down to the frame. They
were reversed so all the forward gears drove backwards. They both had a 14' buck on them with a hydralic pump that ran off the power take-off on the transmission. You could pick up just short of a half ton of hay on each trip.
They were fast. Especially when you ran over a bumblebee nest.
We had a 40' spring toothed rake to windrow with instead of rolling them up with a side delivery. They are still manufacturing those rakes South of Atkinson.
If you had a good guy pulling up hay on the slide stacker, he could throw the hay anywhere in the cage he wanted by how fast he was going when he came to the top of the slide and where it was put on the slide buck.
We usually had to go slow when mowing the first few rows out from the trees. The does liked to hide their fawns in the hay. We usually got a couple each summer. When you saw a badger though. It was a whole different game. There was open season on badgers as far as my father was concerned.
After haying was done we would winch the 4 or 5 ton stacks onto the underslungs using a stinger winch on the back of a Farmall "M". And move them into the stackyards before fall when the cows came home.
We started haying the high ground just before the end of June and ended by the third week in August as the boggy ground dried out.
(Side note) Old sickle knife sections can be forged out, making really good utility knives.
Hard work, but good memories.

[Windy in Kansas]

My dad tried a variety of methods for putting up hay but always returned to the tried and true method of using a binder which turned out bundles of feed to be put into shocks.

He tried stacking bulk hay with a Jayhawk stacker which fit around the tractor instead of using horses. http://www.classicpix.com/cat/psdbi/...am1=0587144750

He tried silage but the cattle didn't care for it. Perhaps it hadn't been put up properly, I don't know.

He also hired small round bales made one year http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/far...chines_06.html

When the cattle were finally sold off he was still using the binder and shocked feed method. That was in the late 1960s.

[SFM in KY]

Originally Posted by Cornhusker

Anybody but me old enough to remember putting up hay stacks instead of bailing everything?
<snip>
The sweeps (tractors turned around so they were rear steering) had a head on the front, maybe 10 ft wide with long oak teeth and side teeth. the only adjustment was the ability to raise and lower the tips of the teeth so you didn't stick them in the ground or skip over hay.
<snip>
The stacker had a wide head on it, maybe twice as wide or so than the sweeps.

We were still haying with horses when I was growing up on the ranch in OMontana and everything was put up in stacks of loose hay. My grandfather did the mowing. The raking was done with a dump rake ... also with a team or horses.

For stacking, the sweep (in our area it was called a buckrake) and it was also horse powered, but a horse was hitched on each side of the "works" and behind the sweep head, with the driver on a seat behind the horses so foot and hand controls could be managed. My grandmother always handled the team on the buckrake. A load of hay was pushed up onto the stacker head and then someone would pull the overshot stacker up with the little Ford tractor and dump the load of hay onto the top of the stack.

One or two people were on the stack and would pitchfork the hay over the top of the stack evenly.

By the time I was 12 or 13 we were baling hay and no longer using a team of horses, although some of the equipment was horse drawn equipment that had been modified to be pulled by the little 8N Ford tractor ... or a John Deere that we also had by that time.

[lapdog59]

I grew up on a farm in northern Colorado. We stacked alfalfa hay loose. We used a Ford tractor to mow and a Minneapolis Moline Z tractor with a side rake. We used a Minneapolis Moline U tractor with a Farmhand loader with a sweep to bring the hay to the stack. The Z only had a magneto and a crank to start it.

I also worked on a ranch in Wyoming with native hay where we used horses and wagons to haul square bales to the stack. I would have to get up at daylight and go out on a horse to wrangle in the horses to be worked that day. The mowing was done with Farmall tractors and the raking with scatter rakes. Before they converted to bales, they used sweeps of old converted automobiles where the they ran backwards so the drivewheels would be directly behind the sweep. The steering wheel, seat and pedals had to be reversed. The axel was flipped 180 degrees to reverse the gears. The hay was pushed up a rack with a plunger mounted on a one and half truck, usually driven by my old maid schoolteacher aunt. My brother was a mower and he had to spend a couple hours after dinner every night sharpening sickle blades. Work continued every day for a month, every day, until the haying was done. I worked on the stack and bucked bales onto the wagons using bale hooks. My aunt and a young girl helper, had to cook all the meals for about 14 people and bring lunch out into the hay fields for the crew. After dinner and breakfast everyone had to take their plates to the kitchen and scrap and stack them. I still take my plate to the sink after every meal to this day. Anyone who came to the table with dirty hands got written the riot act by my uncle. Any hand that showed up drunk or with a suitcase full of Bay Rum was shown the road back to town.

[Junkman]

Oh yeah! I remember trying to toss that hay up on the stacks. I also remember lightening hitting one now and then. My strongest memory is of us boys in the corn field. We would go out in the morning with Grandpap with some jugs of water and biscuits with applebutter on them for lunch. It took all morning for us to hoe to the end of one row. And we didn't get paid anything. One day my brother decided it was too hot and he wanted to go swiming. So he hit his hoe on a rock and broke the handle. He ran to Pap and showed him his hoe. He ended up hoeing the rest of his row with the short handled hoe on his hands and knees.

[minnikin1]

An Amish family moved intot the farm next to ours about 2 years ago.
What an education I've been getting since then!
They still make hay with horses, and they bring it in loose Then the whole wagon load is lifting by ropes to the hay mow in one big wad.
'Scuse the lack of correct terminology.... don't know the proper names for these techniques.

They also shocked their oats to dry in the field. That was the first time I had seen that. Very pretty sight.

[CIW]

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...yAddie2006.jpg
These are my mares- Ruby and Addie. It'll be a hard day when they are gone. They both have mule foals in them this year. Addie is due to foal 15 March and Ruby the 30th.
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/g...en10yrsold.jpg
This is a team that I sold to a friend in Southwestern Wyoming.
Be prepared for a big feed bill but they sure are a pleasure to be around. A team this size is like having 4 saddle horses to feed.

[MullersLaneFarm]

Great photos of Percherons, Belgians and draft MULES! (my love!)

Paul and I have a team of Belgians and still cut & rake using horsepower. We did stack the hay until we got a 14T baler.

[jd4020]

Love the photo of your big beautiful team!!!

We baled hay like this.
First it was cut with the old sickle mower. Then raked into win rows. Then turned.
When it was dry, hopefully before it got rained on, our tractor-an old John Deere--sorry, I don't remember the number, but it had the front tires close together, so it wasn't a very big one. The tractor pulled a square baler and a wagon was hitched behind it. One had to be careful not to pop the clutch and make the guys, who were on the wagon stacking, stumble. Popping the clutch was a bad thing anyway, (got my ears boxed for doing that one time--& one time only) but making the guys stumble or the stacked hay fall over was even worse.
After the wagon was full, it was pulled up along side of the front of the barn. The big hay hooks were then lowered to jab into the set of eight bales. Then my aunt, who was waiting behind the barn on an even older John Deere for the signal, would back up slowly, and haul the bales up into the haymow. She had to avoid the quagmire hole of water, mud and manure, so as not to get the tractor stuck. And also, not get the rope tangled up. When the bales hit the top of the barn they'd shoot back a ways and the hooks would release them.
The guys in the barn had the dirtiest, sweatiest job of all. It would often be over 100 degrees and with the dirt and hay chaff, they were hard workers, but it is a miserable job. Grama always fixed meals on these days for the whole crew. I usually drove the tractor pulling the baler.
Dad still does it this way today, only, use a corn dump to bring the bales up into the barn.

This last summer, we got to watch a farmer mowing hay with his four Belgians. It was awesome to see how they moved through the field.
Thanks for sharing. I like reading how others do things.