One of our neighbors paid 8 cents a bale for us to pick up his small square bales, haul them to the barn and carefully stack them to the rafters back in about 1966 or 1967. We used his equipment and his wife fed us 3 VERY good meals, and the 4 of us got all of his hay in the barn in one day, which really impressed my neighbor. But when it came time to pay the 4 of us, we each got a little less than $20 for more than 12 hours of very hard work. He paid us what we had agreed to, but we were not very pleased at the small reward for our very hard, long day"s work.
The next year, he called to see if I would be interested in hauling hay for him again, and I told him that I believed that he would have to pay us more, since other farmers we had worked for paid about twice what he had. He said he would get back to me, but never did. And I saw that his hay got hauled by someone.
My buddy and I hauled lots of hay while we were in junior high and high school. We kind of enjoyed working hard together and it was a way we could earn some money for school expenses, and gas for our cars when we got old enough to drive. But then both of us got old enough to get jobs that paid better for less strenuous labor, and those jobs didn"t quit after a few days. Over the years I also developed allergies that really bothered me, which also made hay hauling less inviting.
A friend of mine was the longtime football coach at our local high school. He said that back in the 60"s and early 70"s most of his players had worked on farms all Summer and were in terrific shape to play football. But after that time, fewer and fewer potential players had worked hard Summer jobs, and adjustments had to be made in conditioning before the season. The school put in a weight room, which was something never even considered when I was a student. We were tough as nails, just needed to do some running and speed drills and learn the plays!
Back then, almost every little spot that would grow hay in our area was cut and baled. Not anymore. Only a few guys bother to have large animals anymore (and those are usually horses), and fewer still have haymaking equipment. I just brush hogged about 7 or 8 acres of stuff that would have made several hundred small bales of somewhat weedy grass hay, to deal with fire danger and make it look better. It seems a shame to just waste it...but no one else is willing to deal with it, even for FREE!
I would like to have a swather and baler, but I just cannot justify spending the money on them for my 20 acres. And I would be dealing with the baled hay alone, since my kids are all grown and my wife is asthmatic now. I don"t know of any high school kids that would be willing to work for me, and I suppose I would have to pay about $10/hour, or maybe more...so just mowing down the grass and weeds is probably the best solution. Sad!
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Today's Featured Article - History of the Nuffield Tractor - by Anthony West. The Nuffield tractor story started in early 1945. The British government still reeling from the effects of the war on the economy, approached the Nuffield organization to see if they would design and build an "ALL NEW" British built wheeled tractor, suitable for both British and world farming.
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