Bucking hay bales is a pain

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mtmuley

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I have a measly 5 acres of hay to put up. I hadn't bucked, loaded and stacked any hay for a long time. Tonite I did. I liked it as a kid. Now I like being done, having a cold one and surfing MM. mtmuley
 
Nothing like good hard work to remind you of how good you have it now compared to when you were a kid!

UTROY
Proverbs 21:19 (why I hunt!)
 
mtmuley,

I have the same deal. Baled tomorrow and hauled with a hay wagon!;-)
 
It's really not that bad. Hard work keeps a guy honest. I think I'll finish the rest tommorrow though. Now I'm gonna finish another cold one! mtmuley
 
MT- That is what mid-sized bales and tractors are for; getting us out of hauling hay by hand. My eyes itch and my back hurts just thinking of hauling more than a few dozen little bales.

The worst feeling as a kid was when our neighbor brought a load of hay in his hay wagon and when he dumped it the stack looked open and like crap. It was a lot harder tearing it apart and restacking it then just loading it in the field and stacking, but if you are going to do it you might as well do it right. I would sure like to know how many little bales I have stacked over the years.

I unloaded a semi and stacked 19 tons the other day in less than 25 minutes. ahhhhh forks on a tractor and mid-sized bales.....

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I know what you mean muley. Seems when hay gets baled everyone just happens to be busy that day, therefore, you do it alone.
 
Po,

Do you pick up hay by hand? Dude, that would put me in the hospital after the second one! I just cannot see you doing it either? In fact, about 5 years ago I decided to pick the first one up after surgery, it was the last thing I did for 2 weeks! Needless to say, I have never picked up another one. I knock a bale off the stack and where ever it lands is where the string get cut.
 
I guess the "pain" part is more my aching bones that hurt more than they did 30 years ago. ktc, I actually had offers of help from guys at work, but I knew they had fish to catch. mtmuley
 
My last two years of high school and first three of college, i worked for a guy who contracted to load hay trucks. The hay was contracted, sold, by the Hay Growers Association and would be in stacks maybe 6 or 8 wide and a quarter mile long. My boss ran the boom truck and could really swing those bales to me in a hurry. With my well polished "OKIE" hooks, 12" shanks, i would be alone to catch and place each bale on beds of these haul trucks. Each truck held 424 bales, about 50-52 ton, of alfalfa and we averaged about 40 minutes to load and get the ropes tied.

Soon as one truck was loaded, the "V" boards on and tied off, another rig would pull in and we did that over and over, one after another, 6 days a week, 10-12 hrs a day, all summer. Talk about being in shape for hunting and football plus i got paid $3.00 an hr which was decent money for me as before this job, i worked and hauled our families hay for free.

Why i'm not sure but when i got home i'd change into my running gear and jog my 8 mile loop. I can not imagine a better way for a young man to get and stay in shape but i believe squeeze rigs do most of the stacking on trucks these days.

I often wonder how i'd make out up on the stack again at this age. These thoughts do not last too long. :)

Joey
 
Joey, That method of stacking is a lost art. Not too many guys can even build a ground stack nowadays. Automation makes haying a one guy operation anymore. Realizing that, I guess I shouldn't ##### about doing 5 acres the old way. Have a good weekend guys, mtmuley
 
Gees Mtmuley.....you in some third world country or what. I've heard of hand stacking but never seen it done....we do things differently out here in Ca. Work smart not hard :)..........


H9870_primary.jpg


P.S....Its called a "harrow bed". :)

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
 
Muley, Yea i suppose so. Some days when we didn't stack trucks all day we'd deliver a couple loads to dairys, or horse guys. My boss's truck was like most everybody's, semi and pull trailer, w'd often deliver to people that didn't have enough room in their small barn or shed for the whole load but cracked me up cause they wanted it "in there" just the same. We did our best.
This "job" was centered around Tracy Ca. Anybody that's been there in the summer knows how hot it gets. After awhile, couple weeks, hauling that stuff was just another job, no harder or easier than any other, it was just a job.

One time we pulled into the "stack" and there was another hauler that had a 3 man crew already there. While one guy was getting swung bales to him on the semi, another guy was pulling bales off the stack on to the trailer. They were about 50 bales into their load. My boss said that if we beat them outa there, he'd give me an extra days pay. I'm telling ya, if you did'nt catch and immediately set each bale exact, he'd try an knock you right off the truck with the next bale. He was that fast with the boom truck. Anyway, i'll never forget, we pulled out loaded and the ropes on in 32 minutes...and they were still there loading. Made my boss very happy as those guys were major competitors in his business and i was happy because of the competitor in me but most of all because i did get that extra days pay. Cool!!

Joey
 
>Hardway, i worked for $3.00hr
>
>How much that rig cost? :)
>
>
>Joey

LOL, If you guys had a hay truck there had to be harrow beds and squeeze's around. Seriously, I dont know when they started using them, but for at least 30 yrs or so around here in the valley. Everybody around here has one, so even the small guys who dont have one just pay someone who does to stack it.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
 
I feel your pain and then some! We put up 900 small bales of meadow hay and stacked it in a barn. I am pretty sure my arms each stretched about 6 inches! My buddy with big bales calls small bales IDIOT CUBES! He's probably right!
 
Hardway, my last seasons hauling was 1973-4. That was right before i ever saw the first squeeze and harrow beds weren't yet stacking squeeze stacks. Back then, it was hands on and hands off. Not too long after that, yes you're right, but not before then.

Joey
 
Hell Joey, I dont even hardly see small bales anymore. All the daries want the big "1 ton" bales anymore. If it was'nt for the horse guys I think the small balers would be parked for good.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
 
Lol, Biggest bales i ever saw was the very old 5 wire bales that were the bottom row in our old barns. We had 3 barns to fill every year yet we'd never get all the way down and those 5 wire jobs stayed right where they had been for many, many years.

Other than that, our neighbor used to put up some real heavy wheat bales. I used to help him with his hay there for a few years and commented to my Grandfather on how heavy those bales were. He told me that Mr Morris sold his hay by the ton and a good portion of it was dirt clods! :) I swear some of those bales would go 180 or better and would average 160+

That was a neat time of my life. I worked hay in the day, ran in the evenings, scouted bucks until dark, and had a couple of the best looking gals to be found anywhere to play with until i did it all over again the next day. Life was good!!!

Joey
 
Hope I am not butting in...

This post reminds me of simpler times. Growing up in IL I put up a lot of straw and alfalfa bales. We were really in the stone age - the poor dumb HS kids (with more strength than sense) stood on a hay rack and stacked the bales as they came off the baler. Then when you had your racks full you pulled them to the barn and put em in the loft. The bales never touched the ground. Hardways system seems much easier...

I made the trip home last weekend and some guys in NE still stack the big loose 'hay stacks.' They were in the field working - I believe they use buck rakes?

Anyway - neat post. Good times back then...
 
LAST EDITED ON Jul-04-09 AT 00:58AM (MST)[p]RamT, heck, you're not butting in atall :) If anything i guess i kinka took over muleys thread and i tip my hat to him for bringing up such a subject so deep in my roots. I'm not sure what you mean by a "hay rack" but can imagine.

There was several old different kinds of rigs on our place that helped with the hay. We rake windrowed the hay into rows after cutting it with the old rubber tire rigs with them sickle mowers that were so hard on pheasents and rabbits ears. So, the hay bales was in rows too, you see, and this contraption we called a jackrabbit would be geared off it's tires. You'd attach it to the side of the 100 bale flatbed and the drivers job, was to drive down these rows and center a bale so it would trip the lever which would cause a fork to drop down on top of the bale. The wheels gears would then raise the bale all the way up to the top of its arch where it would let it go only to go back down ready for the next bale to trip the lever and repete. You had to get one of your hooks in that raising bale so as to let it drop were you wanted it to, or, if the stack was pretty high already, you might have to finish pull the bale up a foot or so to top out the load. Once loaded with the 100 bales, then its off to the barn, worked pretty slick with one guy driving and one guy stacking!

At 15, 1969, my buddy and i put and stacked several thousand bales in the barn by ourselves that way. We split even steven a dime a bale. I made enough money to buy a brand new Mod 700 adl 25-06 with a straight 6X Redfield widefield. To this day the best darn gun i ever owned!!

...And cutting that hay with those old wheel tractors on the steep sidehills?? I never did care for that much. If you've ever done it you know what i mean!!

Joey
 
My father cut and baled on contract, all thru my teenage years......1960 thru 1965, when I graduated high school and went off to college. No bank out wagons or squeezes in those days around us.

I did sprinklers before school and after football practice, EVERY day. Siphons or pipe......galvanized. What was a wheel line?

Football camp was a walk in the park for me.

I would not even attempt to buck a bale today.
 
Nickman, i figured you fer a fellow that knew his way around a place needing tending to.

It's a good life for those that don't need to make much money. Lots of hard work and not much thanks. Everybody thinks those that have lots of land are rich. Yes, if they sold out, depends who buys is very important in this respect, but money can be made. Most every farmer or rancher i ever knew would never sell. There was always plenty on the table and some coin in our pockets but to us, it was the guys that lived in town with the new cars and trucks that was rich. As a youngster, i thought everybody had a ranch. We did what we did and looking back, i think it was the best possible way to grow up!

Joey
 
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Sounds like a pretty neat system sage. This is the best example I could find of the rinky dink method east of the mighty miss. A couple differences - air conditioned tractor I never sat in, bigger 'rack', two guys stacking and we went a hell of a lot higher than those sissies.

I don't recall what I was paid but I remember the drinking age on that farm was 16 and a cold beer has never tasted better.

No one raised hay commercially back there. And now with grain prices as high as they are it seams marginal acres are going to corn and soybeans (and less live stock these days). Not many folks bailing like they used to....

Good stuff...
 
We hauled yesterday. I have a system that works pretty good. I'm not putting up very much hay but we hauled a 5 acre field in 3 hours. I had my 13 year old daughter driving, my 17 year old daughter stacking and I pitched. It worked and the kids learn how to work instead of laying around playing video games and texting. I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's always an adventure!!!
www.awholelottabull.com
 
RamT said "...two guys stacking and we went a hell of a lot higher than those sissies."

:) lol!! Thank you! Pretty neat way to do it actually. I've not seen it done like that but there you go!

I know what you mean about those suds tasting so good! On our place, there was no drinking age. If you did a mans days work you were welcome to a beer or a pull off the wine jug if one was being passed around. :)

Looks like Alfalfa?? Got to water that stuff. Our farm/cattle ranch was strictly dry farming. We tried to make barley on 80% of what we farmed but usually the heads would be damaged for lack of timely water, one reason or another, so we'd cut it green and make hay. We were also known for some of the finest stemmed red oat hay to be found anywhere and there was one field we put in wheat every year.

Unrelated but real nice for me, Grandpa put a couple strips of sweat sudan grass right in with the barley back behind the ranch house. Talk about a deer magnet!! I never did know what happened to all those arrows i shot and barely missed at those bucks! Grandpa was ahead of his time in that respect.

Joey
 
Bull Congrats on getting those girls to work! I believe i've seen a pic or two of them in these pages and you're to be congratulated, looks like some fine young ladies. And, i believe i saw where you're taking them hunting this coming season! You're a Blessed and lucky man indeed!!

Joey
 
Great post. This brings up memories of baling/hauling hay in Alabama years ago. We worked similar to the rig in the picture except the baler dropped bales on the ground. We had one truck driver, two loaders walking beside the truck and one stacker. The trailers were bigger and the stacks higher. After the trailer was loaded it was off to the small barns to stack and usually in 90 plus temps with high humidity.

I learned a lot about work in those days and it served me well.
 
I guess there is a difference between being a landowner and a "sharecropper". We never had the luxury of having a bale wagon. My uncle did, but he had his own field to take care of and my dad took care of a 25 acre field for a lady (seed, water, fertilizer, pest control, cut, bale, haul, stack and sale) in exchange for the hay we needed for our horses for the year (or something like that). Sometimes we could find a lucky soul or two who would agree to buy it out of the field but most of the time it was either out of the stack or delivered, which meant that we "got" to help dad haul it all by hand. What a treat it would have been to get paid $3/hr! Normally we kept all of the 3rd crop for ourselves. It was a mixture of grass and alfalfa making for two-strand 65-75 lb bales. By the time I was 17 I could throw those bales 6 high above the back of the truck, 8 high if we were using a trailer. The rule was "first broken bale buys the beer" (root beer for me of course!) but Dad never held me to it! Good times and good hard work.



UTROY
Proverbs 21:19 (why I hunt!)
 
LAST EDITED ON Jul-04-09 AT 08:16AM (MST)[p]Ty- of course the back hurts, but what am I supposed to feed the ponies when I go on Forest Circus lands? Glad you have a good wagon stacker and some long 2x4s.

Here is what most wagon stacked bales look like at one time or another, hahaha:

haystack11.jpg


We have a raised concrete floor under the barn in our feedlot, where we can just sweep the hay into the mangers. In the barn hangs the old power elevator, which I hope to never use again.

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I grew up on an eastern Iowa dairy farm . All summer , every summer, thats all I did was bale small squares. It seemed like my dad always would bale the hay for every neighbor within a 20 mile radius and my brothers and I alweays suffered the consequences. We never got payed. Food and a roof over our heads was payment. When I would get out on the weekends my friends and I would brag about who put up the most hay that day. I turned 43 today ( firecracker boy ) and when my dads farm comes out of CRP in 3 years I would like to put it all in hay. Am I nuts?
 
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but on this 4th of July, I am way proud to be part of this MM group of guys who know what it is to grow up being part of the "fabric" of America.

I feel sorry for kids that didn't or don't appreciate what it takes to get the job done with blood, sweat and tears.

God Bless parents like Jenn and others, who still practice those values.
 
I AGREE NICKMAN......THE FABRIC OF THE FELLAS ON THIS MM SITE IS THE CLOSEST THING TO WHAT I CALL "NORMAL".....EVEN THOUGH I AM STILL NOT SURE ABOUT A FEW OF THEM....HE HE !!!....YD.
 
Just to clairify, when i worked for the family while growing up, there was no pay other than plenty of ammo, clean clothes, great chow, and a few dollars in my pocket come fair time. It was when i went to work for the professional truck loader and hauler for the summer in my late teens that i made the huge sum of $3.00/hr.

Some years, the stars all lined up and we would have weather when we needed it and we could make Barley instead of hay. Grandpa knew the guys with Combine Harvesters and the big rig trucks that hauled the barley away. We had our own "bankout wagon truck", a mid sized truck that also had a holding bin on it but nowhere near the size of the big rigs. The old harvesters would cut off and chew up the tops of the barley stalks, spit out the chaft, and when it's own small bin was full, discharge the grain into the big truck bins for hauling to market.

We almost always used our own barley for seed. Some of this barley to be harvested was a ways away from where the big trucks could park so we used our bankout truck to hold that seed. On the back of that trucks bin was two slide shoots that you could open and close. There was two nail like hooks wielded under each shoot. I remember learning to hook a gunny sack on those "hooks", opening the shoot until the sack was about full, bumping it with my knee so the sack filled evenly, and closing the shoot at the right time when the sack was about full. Pull it off the hooks and using a bent sack needle and rough twine, make two half hitches on the right hand dog ear. Then push and pull your pre-cut sack twine all pretty and even like, sewing across top top of the sack until reaching the other side corner where you'd make another dog ear and two more half hitches on that. Cut the twine with the sharp needle edge on the point side of the twine hole and you had just built a sack of barley! Put it on the hand dolly, bottom one on edge, an build another sack... Once you had a dolly full, it didn't take long once you got the hang of it, you wheeled it in the grainery to dump the sacks against the others. If you stacked the dolley right and pushed it againt the others just right, the load wouldn't fall over and have to be hand stacked. On good years we'd buck up sacks on top of those that were all lined up pretty to make room for more sacks. After a day or two of making sacks of barley, you felt like you done something!

Me and my Uncle Russ, 3 years older than me, both learned and took over these duties from our elders, we usually did this chore but i remember helping with it and watching them build sacks long before i could ever hope to lift one of those heavy sacks. It was harvest time and having plenty of barley to make seed was one thing but when those big rigs made several trips each to where they took the grain was another reason to rejoice. There would be a good grain check that year! Grandpa might smile more than normal for a few days but other than that you'd never know it because there was no "extra" money, no new trucks to buy or things like that, it's just what we did and now that the barley was taken care of, it was time to cut the barley stalks off short and make straw, a whole nother process. :)

Joey
 
NVBighorn, I hear ya. There's days I never wanted to see another bale. Actually, I think the lowly bale of hay has had a big influence in the shaping of character and instilling a work ethic in a lot of people. Hardway, I've run bale wagons quite a bit, and for small squares, they are the ticket. I coulda done my 5 acres in about a half hour. I hate to admit it, but I have 1 more load left this afternoon. (I went scouting for bucks this morning) This thread has been fun. Next time I need help with hay, I know where to find guys with experience. LOL mtmuley
 
Reading all these stories sure does make me appriciate those big juicy ribeyes I BBQed this afternoon!

Happy 4th to all!

Eel
 
Those little bales are called "Idiot Bricks" now back home everyone tries to bale 1/2 ton or 1 ton bales(better stacking on Trucks too) and they are all tractor work.
Tha being said last weekend I brought home( from Ut) a 120 of those Idiot bricks and stacked them in the hay barn for my horses and mules. LOL
We use to bale alot of hay as a kid, we use a old roll baler Allis Chambers(small 50-60 lb roll bales) then we got a small square baler 80-100 lb bales) then a Big round baler(1000 lbers) then a big square baler(1000 lbers) now they use a really big one that does 2000 lbers
I'm glad I don't have to put up hay like we did as kids.


"I have found if you go the extra mile it's Never crowded".
 
Haying has always been my least favorite farm operation. This year we started green chopping and packing in a pit. I like it a whole lot better than swathing, raking, watching it get rained on and then raking it again, baling, and then stacking.

Summer of 78 I worked on ranch operation in North Park, CO. We worked a whole lot of hours 7 days a week and still didn't get all the grass hay put up. Twas a summer to remember fondly though. They fed us three huge meals a day and about ten of us 18 year olds lived in a bunkhouse.

Bean
 
I'm going out to get my last load. Nobody mentioned using a beaverslide. In the Big Hole country here in Montana, they are still very much in use. Neat way to put up hay. mtmuley The Idiot Cube thing really cracks me up. That's what I am going out to load now!
 
While we are on the whole hay thing....what is everybody paying for hay so far this summer. Last year I saw it for $4-$5 a bale. I have seen it as low as $2.50 this year for good horse hay (80%/20%). Just curious. I know a lot of guys lost a big portion of their first crop this year in Utah due to our abnormal rain fall. Everything is green except for all the brown bales still sitting in the fields.


It's always an adventure!!!
www.awholelottabull.com
 
I used to haul when I was a kid-no more,thank you very much.:)

Here in TX round bales now outnumber the small square bales 20 to 1.
 
Good grass hay in western Oregon is around $120 a ton , you can get it cheaper if you look around and buy it in the field.
 
Unfortunately I didn't grow up ranching or farming but I enjoy the crap outta it.

When i was 12 I spent the whole summer digging trenches for our sprinkler system, no big deal but it was hard pan.

Now I load 17 bale to the ton hay on a trailer and stack it when i get home. it's honest work even it's only for myself.

Last week i loaded, unloaded and stacked 2 ton both Thursday and Friday, cut 2+ cords of wood both Sat and Sun. (stacked neatly)

At 49 I'd rather do that than sit behind a desk all day and tell subordinates how to deal with convicts.

Given telling someone how to do something or doing it myself, doing it myself is always better. I really enjoy getting my hands dirty and wrestling convicts is great exercise. :)
 
DAMN!!!!! In NE Kali I'm paying $170.00 a ton. Got a good deal for wheat grass hay for $160.00 and it was 20 bales of 110-120 lbs bales.

Buddy of mine who has been real good to me in the past wanted 180.00 a ton this year. I picked it up in the field for $170.00.

Buddy or not, I pricing it now for the entire year. Gonna get another 8 ton this month and be done with it.
 
Last year we paid $175.00/ton, this year our guy is going to let us have it for $85.00/ton and we have to pick it up in the field. Any body want some first crop this year? He has about 300 ton put up and needs room for 2nd and 3rd crop.
 
did it for a lot of years when i was younger. the problem was, i have always had extremely bad hay fever. nothing like being half blind from swollen eyes and struggling to breath cause your throat closes up and youve only done about 2 rows! oh ya, and the old man rockin out in the truck:)
 
Now that the hay is in the stack, I can see that the local gopher population took advantage of the cover to re-establish. I'mm heading out now with the old Marlin 60 to take care of it. mtmuley
 
I bailed, loaded, stacked, unloaded, and restacked in barns for a few years as a kid and yep it was some tough work. We always stacked our hay in the barn loft by escalator. Dad floppin the bails off the wagon below and us boys throwin and stackin above in 90 degree humid as heck heat in a hot nasty barn! That's where dad wanted it so there was no going to the round bails when they came out. My brother still does about ten acres a year and my sister has 5 acres she has put up too. My brothers set up is exactly like Ramtagless is. Darn near looks like the same tractor and bailer too. Someone mentioned price. I now live in Arizona and hay isn't cheap. My sister about fell off the chair when I told her I was paying 10 bucks an 80lb. alfalfa bail here at the local feed store. My hats off to you guys that still do this. It's tough work but as someone mentioned it really builds character in kids and it's too bad kids today don't get involved with this at least enough to appreciate it.

GBA
 
And here is to the Village "idiot", hay hauling is one of my great pleasures, As a kid we would put in 800 ton out of the feild and into the barn many times with a horse drawn wagon, small bales.
Today I still look forward to haying season, all horse hay is small bales. For the last two weeks goal has been 300 bales out of the field and into the barn by hand each night 4:30 - 7:30 after work (monday thru Thursday). Will continue until the end of the season. No better workout than that, my fitness center if you will, come September I am usually pretty fair shape for an old kid.
There is a lot of satisfaction in spending quality times with my girls and a square hand stack. I hope I never get too old. At 81 my friend had 53 bales loaded on the trailer before I got to the field one night last week, something to be said for hard work.
 
We just bought some dairy quality alfalfa for $100/ton delivered. Really good hay. My friend's FIL sold his rained on for $30/ton in the field and it would have been just fine to feed to either horses or cows. I wish I had bought every bale. The price in Utah has definately come way down.

MulePacker- If all horse hay is small bales then why are you feeding it to mules? Don't tell my horses, they will starve. hahaha Back in the day I liked to haul little bales in the evening. Now I'd rather ride in the evenings and use the tractor to unload a semi infront of the farm.

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www.sagebasin.com
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Bessy was going to share a story about when he was a young man out in the basin, until he realized that the title was "B"uckin' hay bales. I guess he'll have to save his story for another time.
 

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