Temporary labor help
 

It's that time of year, time to get that hay into the barn.

We have been noticing a very definite trend in terms of finding labor to help with this task and others on the homestead (small homestead, not a business).

Back in the day, the local kids or young adults would make the rounds helping families get their hay in for the summer and earn some real good money. Eventually as they aged and moved on another group of local youngsters would take their place. Used to be you could put an add in the local paper and get a response, many times an add was not needed as they came to you. Used to be the nearby college would have students who wanted to do this. Used to be you could find a group of them through the local grange or Church.

Nowadays, not so much.

There seem to be fewer kids in the population in general, and much fewer young adults as they race to escape the rural areas in search of jobs/money/schooling/culture.

Many of the youngsters that we have talked to simply have no interest in doing this kind of work. Some of them work part-time in the nearest town at the fast food places or retail stores, others do chores at their home, not sure what all the others do besides wait for high school or college classes to start up again in the fall.

I don't think it's the pay as all the rural families we know pay very well.

This can be a real problem for many families, especially the ones who are getting up there in age and whose children have grown and are away on their own. At a certain age/condition doing this kind of work gets to be down right painful if not dangerous.

I've noticed some rural folks are dealing with this by traveling to the nearby town and picking up a couple of 'day laborers' or 'displaced travelers' who hang out in front of places like Home Depot waiting for work to come along.

How about your area, easy to find local home-grown youngsters willing to work these kinds of jobs?

I agree, it is not the pay. Seems like many are not being raised to work anymore. My boys are in high demand for hay, fencing, mowing, etc.

Check out you Child Labor Laws kind of puts the stop to things.Most people won't take the chance.

big rockpile

My hay guy complains all the time that he can't find help. I have offered to throw bales for him in trade for hay, but his wife ixnayed THAT idea! :eek:

I have a 13 and almost 15 yo just itching to get a haying job but there just aren't any around! Most farmers around here have gone to round bales so no need for teenagers to help.

When I was a child, I lived in Selmer TN with my GGM.

Each year, people in the community would get together and make the rounds to each other's land helping in the fields...I even had my own kid-sized tow sack for picking cotton.

Each household would bring food and everyone shared at lunch (that was some gooooood food, BTW!). Everyone was dead tired at the end of the day, but the crops were brought in and the sense of community was made stronger.

It's a shame that things like that are almost gone.

Yep, the day has come it is harder to find hay help than it is finding lips on a pig. I have gone to round bales first cutting and try getting the rest in the barn after that. But man it is hard to get help (Good that is) my wife and I have baled an awfull lot of hay by ourselves. But with two little ones it is not a good idea anymore. One time I had 6 kids working for me one day, 4 in the mow and 2 unloading and hauling in and me baling with my brothers kicker baler. We put up 1200 bales that day and was all stacked in the barn that night, but man were them kids tired. And so was I. >Thanks Marc

I agree there is a big disconnect! My own son sneers at me for wanting to do "things people don't have to do any more." I have tried at various times to find kids to help me do simple things. I thought home schoolers would be perfect but I was sure wrong! Whatever they are being taught at home (the few I actually had here) it sure wasn't how to get things done or think for themselves. They weren't a help, they were a hazard. And wanted more per hour than I make!
I also tried some el salvadorans who bought a home nearby. They do not speak english but whatever I wanted done, they wanted $100. After they had been here, a lot of my things disappeared although maybe the 4-wheelers took them.

Kids don't have a way to GET to the farm these days either. Parents nix the bike riding for hours on end. But I agree with the round bale statement. Most farmer's don't need the help.

Last year, I hired the neighbor kid to help me. He was on house arrest and had to get permission from his parole officer to help me. An ad on craigslist earlier this year got some light tractor work done within 24 hours.

I loved working hay when I was in high school.

The pay was $8-$10 an hour, back in the mid-eighties, and I had all the work that I wanted.

I still do hay at 36! though you know theres alot of competiton for the jobs too.

so guess its the area.

the haying jobs around here that always are looking for help are the one that pay 5.00 an hour but most folks offer at least 7 and a decent lunch and depending on how long you work many will through in supper to.

last guy I stacked for payed 10.00 but he has regular guys think he wanted to light a fire under them, me and a buddy went through a wagon an hour,a few where larger and really loaded. he was happy to get it done before the rain.

Things are different these days for sure. Not for the better necessarily. Kids AND adults have too many choices to avoid real work. Our culture has seen to that.

What kid wants to work AND text at the same time... It's not SAFE! Plus sports and opportunities of all sorts.

When I was a kid my favorite things to do were to spend time with my farmer friends. We cleaned algae from the lake, cut firewood, mulched and orchard, and the work was year round. I enjoyed it so much I didn't even get paid for a lot of it. In return I got a membership to fish the lake and got fed a delicious meal every day I worked.

Teens around here are placing ads online and on walls at gas stations and grocery stores looking for work, alot specifically say farm work. there are not enough paying jobs around here for them doing laboring or anything else. My two youngest sons will take on any job and have placed ads for jobs also, they maybe get one call every two weeks, and so far no calls for 'regular' jobs even with dozens of applications out there. I don't think the farmers around here, big or small, can afford to pay anyone for help so they are doing it alone or having family help.

I don't know what it has been like the last 2 or 3 years, as all of our "hay guys" have gone to the big round bales. Before that, though, one friend was always short of hay help ... he put his hay up in small square bales and needed help. Got so he could not find high school kids that would do it ... town kids didn't want to do heavy farm work and the farm kids were busy on their own farms. For several years he kept "Mexican" help ... not sure if they were from Mexico, Honduras or where, but he was very pleased with them. Unfortunately, the hoops that the government put him through to get them here legally got to be more and more of a problem, plus more $$ up front somehow (not sure of the details now) but he finally gave up on that as well. Went to the big round bales so he could do all of it with machinery.

He'd have preferred to continue with the small squares ... more demand for them and overall more profit ... but not if he couldn't get it off the field and into the barn.

On a related topic- How do you protect yourself from being sued if the temporary help gets injured? I want to hire some strong backs to help raise my barn, but I don't want to lose the place to some slick lawyer if someone gets hurt. It's a shame you have to think this way these days, but I have been sued- it's no picnic.

I just don't see many of the rural folks around here being able to afford to change their long paid for and maintained square bale equipment out for round bale stuff. Much cheaper for them to go to home depot and pick up a couple of illegals and have the hay off the field and stacked in the barn in two days.

It's not just hay work, there is a whole list of other jobs around the homestead that you used to be able to get college/high school people to help out with, such as all the firewood that needs processed for heat, outbuildings that need repaired etc. This list gets longer as the homesteaders age because they can't do as much hard physical work any longer. They get along fine most of the year but there are a few jobs that require a strong back.

Insurance.

I agree that it's hard to find any kids who want to work outside. And the ones that will agree to do it are generally worthless -- can't think anything through for themselves or get anything done without you holding their hand the whole time. They have more of a put-the-time-in-and-get-paid attitude than a get-the-job-done kind of attitude.

Your best bet is to talk to the local vo-ag teachers and 4-H leaders. Put the word out that you're looking for kids interested in working. The kids in these programs are the ones who are used to and interested in doing homesteading types of chores and can actually take some initiative themselves.

My mother-in-law hired a couple of vo-ag highschool kids to clear some brush at her place. While they were there they also found several other jobs that needed to be done and offered to do them. One of them was to bring their own welder and fix her broken gate! They worked hard, did a great job, charged a reasonable price, and took pride in their work. They wanted the job and the money and were glad to have it. Seeing that really made me happy and gave me much more hope for today's youth and the future.

I haven't hired anyone for a long time, but I still believe the good ones have jobs already, and their employers won't share......
You might find a good young one and do some teaching, but otherwise, be prepared to do a lot of supervising.

This may be of good use when hiring minors for farm work: http://www.stopchildlabor.org/USchildlabor/fact1.htm

Lots of things on that list...
geo

Or just stick to kids who are 18, or I guess 17 in some states.

Yep and these are only things peculiar to hiring children. One still has to cover the worker's social security etc, unless the worker hires out as "contract labor", then he is responsible for that. Add to that liability insurance. For years, temp farm work was on a cash basis and no one paid much attention, but all that has been changing. Like others have said, most city kids stopped wanting to work that hard, and most farm kids were already busy at their home place. A high school age person who wanted to work and was a good worker, became unique enough that he could work in town at a better paying and easier summer job. The laws, the laziness, and the insurance were all factors in convincing people to go to the big bales.

It is usually only mom and pop outfits that have square balers anymore....they get help from their own kids and neighbors. With all the horses, and the homesteaders around there is a good market for the small bales. Pick it up in the field and one can usually save some good money.

When I worked hauling hay we did about 1600 bales a day between 4 guys. This was when I was 19. I remember the pay being about 15$ an hour. But man was that some hard work. Sadly it seems we will be moving back to the city since the country life doesn't support our business as well as we hoped and without a homestead type property to live/work the business sole income is not enough for us to realize our dream in the time frame we are hoping for.

We got paid by the bale when I was akid.

Ya it was something like .45c a bale when I did it. This was only 5-6 or so years ago

That was good pay. When I hauled hay I got .02 cents a bale.

No, these are not city kids, that was my point. These are country/rural kids that don't want to do this work.

Only? The mom and pop single family homesteads are Exactly what I'm talking about here, and they frequently do not get help from their own family because the youngsters leave the nest as fast as they possibly can, and the neighbors are in the same boat as they are. It's just not feasible to drop the coin on changing your infrastructure from square bale to round bale for a single family homestead that is simply trying to maintain their mostly self-sufficient lifestyle.

So you have a declining kid population overall + country kids who do not want to do this kind of work + aging homestead families with no children left at home, and who find it increasingly difficult to do some of the more physical jobs on the homestead but can't find temporary local labor = travel to the nearest town and pick up some likely illegal 'day laborers' to get the jobs done.