I never thought I would see this again
Very few people can appreciate my nostalgia when I saw this picture someone had posted on Twitter. I thought it was a practice of farming that was gone. Now harvesting hay has moved to bale large round bales that the farmer can move to the barn by himself. Harvesting hay in square bales like this is very labour intensive. When we would do it, we would have a man baling hay in the field (we had a bale thrower towards the end). A man drove the wagons between the field and the barn. One man would unload the wagon onto the elevator that you see in the image, and three men were up in the haymow. I say men because it was generally the case, although there was one woman who worked one summer. It was a hot, dirty job that was very taxing on your energy.
I worked in the barn. I had unloaded hay for most of my life. When I would load the elevator, I would keep the bales going up one after another so they would be touching each other. When I would unload, I would stand at the end of the elevator and toss the bales to one side or the other. Generally, I could throw them into place, and the two other workers would knee the bales to ensure they were tight.
In less than two weeks, we would harvest around 10,000 bales. I would have picked up and tossed every one of them. Imagine tossing 1000 bales of 40 lbs to 60 lbs (18 kg to 27 kg) in weight every day. The first couple of days, your hands would be raw, and you would go to sleep with a body tiredness I miss today.
I didn't know this at the time, but these were some of the best days of my life. I would not trade the camaraderie, appetite for food, or experience climbing up and lying on the day's last load as it headed up to the barn for any other adventure. One thing about putting bales into the barn - when you were done, you were really done.