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Baling Hay
© By Abraham Lincoln
When I was growing up, I never got an allowance. My father was supposed
to send my mother $3.00 a week for alimony, but there were weeks when
we didn’t get any money from him. We always grew vegetables in
the garden and that was our source of food in the winter and summer.
We ate canned green beans from under the bed. Under beds is where most
of the neighbors stored their cans of vegetables from the garden. We
didn’t have money to buy a can of beans but we had quart jars filled
with green beans that we had grown, harvested and mother canned. I was
always looking for ways to make money.
When I got a little older Milbert Ressler or Waxy Burris would pay kids
ten cents for each hamper of ripe tomatoes picked and at the end of the
day kids walked home with money that belonged to them.
Before hay was baled one or two men pitched hay up onto wagons with
pitchforks (a three-forked tool). They stuck their fork into a row of
hay and “pitched” it up onto the hay wagon.
There, another man, or stout boy would pitch it back towards the rear
of the wagon. And he added to that stack until the wagon was filled and
the loaded wagon rocked back and forth threatening to spill the whole
load onto the ground before the horses could get it into the barn.
Once in the barn, someone pulled a rope across the front of the wagon;
then they pulled up the two stakes at the rear and said, “giddy-up” —
the team of horses moved forward and the rope pulled the whole load of
hay off the wagon onto the barn floor. The horses then pulled the empty
wagon back out in the field to be loaded again.
Some farms had a hayfork up along the ridge of the barn roof. It was
like a giant hook made in the shape of the letter “U” stuck in the pile
of hay on the barn floor. A man on the hay floor pulled a rope and the
horse pulled forward and the giant hook lifted a lot of hay up to a
rail and a pulley system, and with a jerk on the rope, the pile of hay
fell into the haw mow.
One of two men or boys in the haymow would use pitchforks to move the
hay into manageable piles. When farmers began hiring other farmers to
run hay-baling machines, there wasn’t a lot for the kids to do. One or
two on the ground to pick bales up and put them on the wagon where they
were stacked up higher than the boy’s head.
Some hay-baling machines towed hay wagons and the hay-baling machines
spit the bales out onto the hay wagon. One or two boys could stack the
bales up higher than their heads and they usually sat on the top row
while the horses pulled the wagon into the barn.
Boys in the barn hooked up the bales and like the loose hay, the baled
hay was pulled up, dropped, and stacked in the haymow. The hay was fed
to livestock during the winter months.
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