For any of you old farm boys who grew up with a sling track in the peak of the barn and maybe an old hay loader retired in the back end of the pasture.

I remember my dad and grandpa talking about it but never really saw a video of how it was done, so here's a good one!
If you're not into this old stuff then don't waste your time. But it sure makes you realize how this is just one more thing our for fathers did the hard way years ago.
I got a real kick out of the old coot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk0f72nc8r4

Farming wasnt for sissies back then....

We had a hay loader similar to that on the farm I grew up on in Wisconsin. Not quite as modern as the one in the video. Coolest piece of equipment I’ve ever seen. When my folks sold the farm, I wanted to keep
It but there wasn’t a practical way to get it to Idaho.

It sold for scrap metal at the auction. I was so sad to see it go.

Thanks for posting the video- brought back lots of good memories.

Awesome.Best thing ive seen in a while.Thanks!!

Thanks for sharing! Today a passed a large loader type tractor with 12 wheels. It was pulling a disk that took up one and a half lanes of the road. It could work up a long 80 in no time.

My grandfather had a cigar box full of arrow heads because he spent so many years looking at the ground while he plowed with a team of horses.

My parent's lived in New Holland PA when they were first married and rented a house from an old order Mennonite family. They became friends and when I was a kid, we would drive out to visit them a couple of times a year. As a kid 10 - 13 years old, I really had a lot of fun hanging out with the boys in the family for the day. (They had 15 kids) We farmed but they did everything a lot different.

I remember going fishing with them. Me and 50 Amish and Mennonite kids hanging out at the local pond. The older kids would remind the younger ones to "talk English" when I was around. I'd go back to being a kid again if they had a pill for that.

Wow memory time for sure.
When I was 12 and 13 I helped with this method in two farms. I was the inexperienced lad 2nd guy on the wagon while loading and a mower in the barn
When I was 14 the first balers came along with the Wisconsin engines on them. We loaded the wagons and used bale hooks to hook 8-10 bales depending upon the model to lift and bring in using the track system and then mowing.
When I moved to the farm I lived in in HS we bought a baler and I was the wagon loader, and mower. We had 40 cows and fed about 5-6, thousand bales of hay per year and 1, 000 bales of straw. (Straw was a vacation)
When I left for college the farmer bought a kick baler!! That allowed a couple people to make quite a bit of hay.

The big issue for many barns in our area was when farmers switched from loose hay to baled hay they needed to pay attention to the huge increase in weight in the mow. Several barn floors came down until they got shored up to handle the extra weight.

Bryce

Our barn had the setup but I never saw it work. My Dad did. I threw hay bales for 1.75/hr when I was a kid. When kids started asking 3.00/hr that's when the big round balers came out. The main shaft bearings weren't beefy enough and a lot of them got hot and burned hayfields.

Thanks for posting, never going to complain about small squares again.

My mother always said that I was born 150 yrs to late That was about the best thing I’ve watched in years! Thanks for sharing!

that was great, thanks for sharing

Nice

Enjoyed that very much!

Haying has always brought back a lot of memories for me.
We baled most of hay on our farm, but for only 30 milkers and a few heifers it wasn't all that much.
Maybe 3 k a year.
I got my real initiation when I was 14 and went out to work for a guy who did custom baling for people along with his 600 or so acres he ran himself. Started at 1-1/2 cents per bale (whoopie!)
His son always loaded, the other senior hired kid unloaded, so I was a mow mole along with another kid...
This guy had the biggest baler new holland made back in the 70's and that dang thing really pounded out the bales and it never seemed to break down.
Did 2200 bales in one day. That was our record. Got done stacking the last bales at about 10 at night. That was a day with a windy previous night so no dew and hot as heck. Was baling by 7:30 that morning. This guy sold a lot of his bales on box cars so they were longer than normal and freeking heavy!
I think back to the days in the morning after milking, sitting in the kitchen while Pa and Eddie (the custom baler) would talk on the phone and discuss who would get me and when for the day...
It was something to hear, two stubborn old German guys bartering over my work schedule for the day...
I had zero say in the matter!

Look how tough it made you though.

I always wonder what those ridge rails at the top of the old barn was for. I remember as a kid, watching a big sow coon scurry up the inside barn wall all the way up to the ridge rail and run the length of it like a slalom course to the far end and then walk down the wall and out the back door. Absolutely dumbfounding. We found her nest in the mow. Four tiny milk suckers. We left them be. We had big trapping plans for the winter.

That the hay loader we had except J Deere pulled it. If you hooked the hooks to deep the wagon went up as well. We would put up five acres a day. nice hay and had 23 cows to feed. So much work. Poor Dad. Raised six kids ans lot of beagles for rabbit hunting.

My barn has the wooden track, acar runs along it. I have never used it , but have seen them used. The old hay rope is still up there , I think and several pulleys. old243

We got $5 a wagon stacked from field to mow.