So, tell me about your experience Haying. (or manual labor task of your youth)

now not everyone is going to have this experience of Haying specifically.

But Repeatedly if I pick the hardest working people out of a group and we get to shooting the bull , I am going to hear about Haying in their teen years from more of them than not.


So if you have experience haying , lets hear it , I bet a lot of trappers do.

if you didn't hay I am guessing you had some other labor intensive chore in your childhood.

not a lot of lazy in trapping. Long lining might even have been your haying. or long hours putting up fur in the shed.

Did some haying, and stall building, never milking though, also unloaded and stacked numerous hay deliveries alone. But my biggest job starting at 15 was commercial clamming with hand raking equipment,
More you caught, the more you made!
Even coon trapped some, but the money was a poor 10th compared to working the bay...

Back when I was a kid my grandpa had a farm that had 2 houses on it.my parents lived InThe smaller house until 1964 then bought a house a mile up the road.my moms brother ran the farm and I was always down there.always helping with milking and doing chores.we put up 1,000's of small squares. When we got done on my grandpa's farm I went to the neighbors and helped them.they put up small squares and small round bales.put the small rounds in a haystack back on the ridge to feed beef cattle in the winter.by the time I finished helping the neighbor it was time to start 2nd crop on my grandpa's farm then back and forth until school started.if I remember right one summer put up like little over 7,000 small squares in 3 days.2 people in the barn and 1 unloading the wagon.my aunt would bale,my uncle hauled in and me the neighbor kid and hired man took turns in the wagon and barn.

Grew up raising cattle and chickens Dad always baled square bales but only when it was 100 plus hot outside hauled more than most my age and we didn’t have bottled water back then just big ol igloo water can with block of ice in it dang I miss the good ol days

Yep, put up small bales, milked morning and eve, built and repaired fence, whatever it took for my dad and brother to maintain our farm. Spare time was good tho, 1500 acres of rice with a reservoir and assorted canals in front and 2k acres of woods and river swamp in back. Had free run of it back then. Sure had some fun back then.

I stood on a wagon 2 different times, on hot Nebraska days, and pulled alfalfa bales onto the wagon a d stacked them. I also drove the tractor part of those days. I was 18 or 19 then.
Does that count?

I rode the wagon and stacked. Back at the barn, I unloaded bales onto the elevator. I’ve had worse jobs.

You never knew a breeze could feel so good till you was hanging out of the hay-maw door between loads.

I've done my share of haying. One of the nicest memories for me was helping friends stack bales onto the trucks from the field. Smaller ones.

It was about sunset. The nearby fields were of mint and alfalfa. The night coolness of N. Idaho settled in, and the sweet smells were amazing. The sunset reflected off the side of the trucks and equipment , lighting them up as if painted murals as we worked.

No one hardly spoke a word. After some hours we all knew our jobs and the stacks went up onto the trucks well. Sometimes I heard pheasants make last minute calls in the distance. The subtle thud of bales , nice looking ones, the sunset and smell of mint and alfalfa, the cool air descending for the eve.

Good, steady work , cooling air, seeing barns full of great hay later, warm shower, good meal, and a nightcap to celebrate.

Life is good.

Lots of horse work. Showing . Hauling. Vet treatments.

One big memory was when I was hired to manage a 40 horse unit of warmbloods. Plus wrangler bunkhouse apartments attached. The place was a mess. I fired a little over half of the workers who refused to work as the owners desired. Hired new hands.

Those barns turned into a place that you loved walking into. Swept clean isles, stalls, tool sheds, tack rooms, feed rooms, all clean and in order.

The owners were thrilled. The wranglers were happy. The show horses were healthier. Hard work , every day , but worth it.

The smells of oiled leather, fresh hay and sweetfeed, fresh wood chips , and ointment , with that clean bag balm aroma.

Life was good.

If all kids have a taste of this life growing up, many more would have intelligence and pride in their work, instead of playing the victim, wanting to be angry and blaming all the time.

Grew up stacking bales every summer now I still Stack bales every summer but bales are a lot bigger and everything has hydraulic’s still bale 1000 small bales of straw every summer for my brothers landscaping business but nothing like we used to

I didn't start haying until I was in my late twenties. I grew up in the suburbs. I hay several times every year now and honestly hate doing it, but I do it.

I didn't start working until I was 15. I cut grass for 50 to 60 some hours a week, until we had a drought in late Summer. I then got a job in food service at Kings Island. I stayed until end of season for the 30 cent hourly bonus. I would get off school at 3:00pm, drive to Kings Island and work from 3:30pm to about 11:00pm.

When Kings Island closed for the season, I got a job working at a Sheraton Hotel in Maintenance. I worked 40 to 48 hours a week through the rest of high school. The hotel was undergoing a renovation, so I completely stripped out 300 plus rooms, including the carpet. Dragging roles of carpet into a steel shipping container, in the middle of Summer and stacking them to the ceiling sucks. During my first Christmas Break of college, I installed 106 toilets in the hotel. I got very efficient and quick at it.

I used to carry 2 full 5 gallon buckets of water and fish about 2 1/2 miles, several times a week, from the time I was 12, until I could drive. I built a lot of ponds, out of big limestone rocks and plastic liners. I kept them well stocked and fed. I changed the designs often. When I was 16, it had finalized into a 44' long water feature, with 2 large ponds, a stream and waterfall.

Keith

When I was in the mining business, part of my job as general manager was to sit in on the hiring process. My second story office faced towards the parking. I had a clear view of those coming and going. Some of these young fellas drove big lifted trucks, many of the diesels. Some had well maintained vehicles, others drove lowered rice burners with coffee can exhausts. Some had whacky stickers all over the glass. Some of these rides, I don’t know how they made it to the interview.. I paid attention to it all, and started to piece together what these guys were all about.

The guys with the lifted trucks, I’d ask them about their rides. Did they do it themselves? How mechanical were they? It didn’t tell you everything…just another piece of the puzzle.

LOL,,,,,Tristen Swindalias,,,,,, the smallest "BIG" guy
Stronger then Bull.
He could pee over a Hay Train backwards,,,,,,,the good old days.

My son would win the contest at Custer days

Meeeeeeeeeee,,,,,,I like a tractor wheel when Harvesting anymore

So not something most can put on a res,,,

one of my first paying jobs was raking the gravel out of lawns. if you have a gravel drive way and get your snow plowed , it is an every year thing.

widows from church hired me to do that and other spring clean up jobs that's how I got started working.

8, 9, 10, 11 I worked with my grandpa on fish boils but that was not paid nor was it a lot of days we would run 5 pots 4 boils and a pot to keep hot water could feed a few hundred people , I was setup help, fire tender , pot refill , overboils and clean up. I did get paid in all the onions I could eat , with ladles of butter and when serving was over I could chow down on pie if I wasn't sick from eating a bucket of onions like apples.

I started working at the farm at 12. we didn't do a lot of hay but we did some and working the maw it gave a real appreciation for trench digging , we were actually more of a construction company run from a farm.

hand dug a lot of trenches to find water leaks or gas leaks or lay new lines in places you couldn't get a machine in.

demo work carrying concrete block walls out 2 block at a time. no one had a clue I was 15 working a construction site , just keep quiet about my age don't say anything to tip anyone off. I was bigger than most grown men by 14 I was wrestling heavy weight in school.

Seems like entire summers were spent on hay racks back in the day. Didn't love it then, but I enjoy putting up hay now.

Didn't do any saying as a kid but had a summer job for a few years howing sugarbeets and detasseling corn.
Hot days I recall.

I started baling hay at 6 years old for 5 different farmers. All I could do was stack them on the wagon.
After I got married I went to work in a foundry at 19. It was the worst work you could imagine. They hired about 20 the same day as me. By the 3rd day there was only 2 of us left. First week I was in tunnels under the foundry. It was beneath the river that was right next to the plant. So the tunnels were half full of water. Had to wear hip boots shoveling sand back onto these overhead belts from where it fell off. That wasn't that bad.
Next job there was on 9A Baseray Shakeout. Difficult to explain but temps were over 115 degrees. Red had iron pieces weighing over 50 lbs. being lifted off the shakout and being stacked right behind you.Had to wear chaps and burn proof jacket to keep from getting skin burns from the red hot pieces. It was 15 mins. on and 15 min. break. NO ONE LASTED MORE THAN 4 HOURS on any given day. Many passed out.
Several years later I applied for a job with 2 owners. One I knew well, but he said his partner had to interview me before he could hire me. Filled out a job application and he took it and said my interview was the next day.
So I walked in. The partner stood up and shook my hand and said you're hired. Not one question. He said on your application you stated you worked in that foundry for 4 years. He said I once worked there. Anyone who made it there four years is gonna work!!

Many thousand bales in June and July

Not only did I haul hay back then, still do. Anybody feeling left out, will start looking for a weather window about a month from today. There are worse things you could do.

As bad as some might think it was back then, remember the farmer had to get up 7 days a week regardless of the weather and pack it out. Some of those days when it's 15 below and snow blowing and wind honking are way worse than summer. Equally as bad are days in Feb when frost has gone out, rain is falling..... mud is knee deep and you are packing 30 to 40 of those bales out by hand. Those are the days you remember.

Plenty of haying,but that was a piece of cake compared to working on the muck farms around here.I blocked lettuce and weeded onions 72 hours a week(12 hours a day every day but Sunday),,for $1.00 an hour.At the end of the week,,i got a brown envelope with $72 in it,,and was glad to get it.Bought my first car with Muck farm money.