I'm still amazed

[kph]

at how haying has changed in just a few short years. I just finished putting up my first cutting. 160 acres, 560 bales cut raked and baled in one week completely by myself and a comfortable, almost relaxing job! Nothing too fancy either, 13' JD 946 moco, Kuhn 10 wheel speedrake, NH 7090 baler and JD 4240 tractor.
I think of all the seemingly endless days as a kid spent riding a bale wagon or up in a sweltering dusty haymow with a 6 man crew. Funny though, sometimes a (small) part of me misses those days. My dad, uncle, brothers and cousins getting together, you had your job and knew what you'd be doing the next few days unless it rained. If you got going before noon you could look forward to a full course dinner at the house, then wait for 3 oclock lunch with a wonderful assortment of cookies, bars, sandwiches ice cold lemonade or steaming hot coffee. Wore through many pair of jersey gloves and blue jean knees, but I think it did build character and something that is gone forever.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

Haying has become a lonely job. :?

 

[R A]

I'm doing my part to keep it alive... . I'm making those memories right now! I dream of having a hay wagon and crew..those days are yet to come.

If I mow, rake and bale what I need to in a day, I watch the sun come up putting bales in the barn. I put the elevator to where I can drop as many as I can up in the barn then go stack and repeat. Most times the bales get wet out there with dew and I'm not sure what is right or not, but I stack them so they dry in the barn, then stack them where they need to be the next day before bringing more in. I bought my electric motor hay elevator for $25 and feel it was a good addition. I spent 30 some days bringing in loose hay last year before I got my baler working and feel I'm cheating this year with my baler working from the start.... . I'm still having to use the neighbor to roll up some big bales along the way though.

I won't have a crew until my boys are bigger and even if I get fancier equipment, still want to do this every year. I'd like to bring in the hay with a team of horses and hay with a team in the winter!!! I think the older ways are a darn good way to do things for the soul!

 

[leanin' H]

Depends on the part of the world you live in i guess. I have put 30 ton in the yard thus far and it is small squares and by hand. Will get 12 ton of 3by4by8s here shortly. Lots of small squares in our area yet. I will haul somewhere around 20000 small squares for my neighbor using a stack wagon this summer. Some round bales and some 3 by 3s as well.

 

[C Thompson]

Hey there R A,
Back in the 70s when I first went to Gcreekrch territory they all were putting it up loose and mostly with horses. Some were cutting with 6 foot three point hitch mowers on 35 horsepower tractors but the rest was done with real horsepower and pitchforks and that took all summer and most of the fall but was as mechanized as it got. They winter fed with teams and took all day to get a couple hundred cows fed. Now the haying is all done with three or four tractors and lots of equipment in a few weeks and fed with the same tractors. The old way was labor intensive and no-one carried any belly fat but there was a profit at the end of the year. Now it is considerably less physical but margins are also mostly gone too. We quit haying altogether 5 years ago and just buy what we need now. The trick is not whether you buy it or put it up yourself but not to need too much in the first place. Good work with the pitch fork last year. Hope your barn is full of the best hay this winter.

 

[R A]

Hey there R A,
Back in the 70s when I first went to Gcreekrch territory they all were putting it up loose and mostly with horses. Some were cutting with 6 foot three point hitch mowers on 35 horsepower tractors but the rest was done with real horsepower and pitchforks and that took all summer and most of the fall but was as mechanized as it got. They winter fed with teams and took all day to get a couple hundred cows fed. Now the haying is all done with three or four tractors and lots of equipment in a few weeks and fed with the same tractors. The old way was labor intensive and no-one carried any belly fat but there was a profit at the end of the year. Now it is considerably less physical but margins are also mostly gone too. We quit haying altogether 5 years ago and just buy what we need now. The trick is not whether you buy it or put it up yourself but not to need too much in the first place. Good work with the pitch fork last year. Hope your barn is full of the best hay this winter.

Thanks for posting this! That would be awesome to see back then! That's my dream... . ..a couple hundred cows and use horses for all I can! I'm working towards it. Not needing much hay to begin with does sound like a good thing. I just have a little left to bale up and I have a barn full of small squares top and bottom now and 51 big bales off of my little hay field. I hope you have lots of grass and don't have to buy much hay!

 

[kelpies4me]

Back in the 70s my hay memories did not include horses (which, w/ my love of horses would have been the bees knees), but it did include my grandmother in her house coat on an old tractor, my brother/his friend in the hay loft and my grand father slinging square bales onto the wagon, while my sister and I ran, yes, RAN ahead and rolled all the bales closer to the wagon. Nowadays I don't see kids running and working so much... Anyway, after the wagon was full, my sister and I had to run down to the house and get Koolaid (cherry usually) in a gallon Mayo jar and have it ready for when they wagon was empty, and we all took a drink. My grandfather did this well into his 80s. He was a smallish man with strength and energy to spare. Learned a lot. I still say, unless you have hayed, and I mean physically- handling bales.. you have a lot to learn.

 

[George]

Had my wife Debi on the tractor and I stacked the wagon ( at 65 ) till a neighbor came over ( he's 42 ) and helped stack.

My wagons are 9' wide and 18' long with 2X8s on the side to "tip" the bales to the center. Hold bales 3 across and so you can put 200 on a wagon 6 high plus a tie. If I leave the hay on the wagons and put them in the barn I have a good excuse to not loan wagons out.

This second cutting is almost pure alfalfa - - - I feed round bales for nutrition and just feed a couple of flakes like candy so the cows find me when I'm in the field.

 

[burnt]

If I leave the hay on the wagons and put them in the barn I have a good excuse to not loan wagons out.

I knew an enterprising chap that built big wagons (24 feet long) out of lumber sawn from his woodlot, using long, slender cedar trees for the sills.

He would stack them full of small squares and back them under a lean-to, sliding them off the undercarriage somehow and dropping the rack onto the ground with its load of bales.

Saved a lot of handling and a 2-man crew could put away a lot of bales in a day. He was a very "unique" character that had more stories about his life experience than Carter has little liver pills.

 

[jodywy]

Dad used to be on the phone every morning putting a crew together. hay was mowed with a tractor and teams did the more wet spots. a dump rake and team, 4-5 guys topping a stack , a turned around tractor for a sweep or buck rake, and a farm hand on a turned around truck frame.
then the whole family baler , 1010 bale wagon(it would unload 1 bale at a time onto a elevator....oil boom , new swather 2 self propelled balers a super stack curser. that took 4 or five of us if we had to rake. now me disc swather , V rake, round baler , loader tractor..... and wagons and 5th wheels and usually just me... This year Sue using her vacation days. :roll:

 

[Faster horses]

Back in the 70s my hay memories did not include horses (which, w/ my love of horses would have been the bees knees), but it did include my grandmother in her house coat on an old tractor, my brother/his friend in the hay loft and my grand father slinging square bales onto the wagon, while my sister and I ran, yes, RAN ahead and rolled all the bales closer to the wagon. Nowadays I don't see kids running and working so much... Anyway, after the wagon was full, my sister and I had to run down to the house and get Koolaid (cherry usually) in a gallon Mayo jar and have it ready for when they wagon was empty, and we all took a drink. My grandfather did this well into his 80s. He was a smallish man with strength and energy to spare. Learned a lot. I still say, unless you have hayed, and I mean physically- handling bales.. you have a lot to learn.

We put up small square bales til we moved here in 1993. We did have a way to stack them (farmhand in Wyoming and kids on the stack) and
in SW Montana we had a Harrobed (Deborrah, spelled backwards--I understand that the man who designed them called them that after his
daughter) that could haul 68 bales at once. But it was up to us to get them from the stack to the hay wagon during the winter.I helped load them some and drove the tractor while Mr. FH fed the hay. When Mr. FH had back surgery in 1996, the surgeon told him that those small square bales being loaded by hand had made him more money than any other one thing.

Now of course we put up round bales and fed with a Haybuster Hay Processor. I never liked it cuz it took my job away. I sure enjoyed seeing the cows every day and watching for heavies and new calves during calving; seeing the quaking aspen get their leaves every spring, and smelling spring come in the pine trees. Feeding was just a one-man job after getting the round baler.

 

[Haytrucker]

I barely remember when Dad bought his first square baler, to quit stacking everything. By my mid-teens he had a better one that could really pack the hay. By the time I left college, and only one brother left behind at home, he started hiring a round baler. Took me awhile to figure that out...
An awful lot of teenagers could use some square bales in their life about now. Or even know what they are for...

 

[Faster horses]

I barely remember when Dad bought his first square baler, to quit stacking everything. By my mid-teens he had a better one that could really pack the hay. By the time I left college, and only one brother left behind at home, he started hiring a round baler. Took me awhile to figure that out...
An awful lot of teenagers could use some square bales in their life about now. Or even know what they are for...

Ain't that the truth!!! :agree: :tiphat:

 

[jodywy]

my ground is dry farm and flood irrigated meadows. most the valley is sprinklers.... gravity flow from the canyons.... they kids all use move hand lines twice a day then buck bales. then in the 70s a lot of side rolls replaced hand lines... there still a few hand lines a few side roll but there starting to be pivots done on cost share, on 40s to over 200 acres, a lot of just half pivots too.... they don't grow enough to pay for them self's with 2 cutting alfalfa or just a barley crop. But I guess with the Government pays most the cost i will still see more come in.

 

[j&lfarms]

Around here a lot of the guys I go to school with still rotate around from farm to farm loading square bales. This year I tore my acl playing football in the spring so I got to drive the tractors while everyone else picked it all up.