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Mr. Luddite

On 10/27/2015 7:30 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 27 Oct 2015 16:57:11 -0400,
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Oct 2015 13:19:14 -0700, Califbill billnews wrote:

John H. wrote:
On Tue, 27 Oct 2015 10:02:56 -0700 (PDT), Tim wrote:

My summer jobs were stacking mostly 80 lb alphalfa hay bales on a wagon
and into a barn from sun up to sundown. Start at 6:30am to about 9pm. 6 days a week.

Usually 80-90 degrees in the direct sun and 120+ in the barn while
breathing straw and hay dust all day.

Baling and stacking hay was often a multi-family job. I really enjoyed the dinners
with two or three families, usually a huge mess of fried chichen with the goodies.
Then back to work 'til the sun went down.
--

Ban idiots, not guns!

I was pretty young when I helped my uncle hay. I drug the bales in to
position on the trailer. Could not toss them up high enough. Hard work.

===

Apparently technology has changed hay bailing a lot. When we drive
through farm country these days I see large round bundles that are
moved around with fork lifts. I'm not sure if they are still tied up
with bailing twine or not. Apparently they don't get stored in barns
either. Most often we see them in the fields with tarps over them.

They have a little square machine that bales these up. I may have a
picture somewhere but they were all over the Dakotas. They are tied
with twine (maybe poly). The farmers have a feeder station that will
take a whole roll at a time. I have seen then in pole barns or, like
you say, more often just out in the field under a tarp.
We did watch one "big old boy" roll one of these up to a feeder and
muscle it in himself when we were in Montana. He was a cowboy on a 4
wheeler.

The hay bales Mrs.E gets are about 3-4 feet long by about 2 feet high
and 2 feet wide. They are basically a series of "flakes", compressed
and held together as a bale with twine. Each flake is about 6 inches wide.

They are easily managed by one person but tossing a hundred of them
up into the hay storage loft could be a bitch. When she orders a
bunch of it to be delivered, they show up with a trailer full of bales
and use a motorized belt conveyor device that goes up to the barn loft
doors.