Chap 15 - We Made Hay While the Sun Shone (conclusion)

The aches and pains started even before we had eaten supper that evening. Different parts hurt on different people. For some it was backs or legs; others it was arms or shoulders. Jeremiah wished out loud that Dr. Fleming would show up, but it was too early for him to come around again. Everyone had their own remedies. Many, like Dad, just wanted a hot bath, so we kept making and carrying hot water all evening. That meant Amy, Lynette, and I had to pedal a little more than normal to keep water in the milk tank. Jenn, Dean, and Vanetta helped out by taking a few turns on the bike.
Lois was busy dispensing. Rubbing alcohol was a favorite, but she also had some analgesic cream made specifically for muscle aches. Some people just chose that stinky ointment that old people often use. A few people had chaffing in areas like their armpits or in between their legs. A little witch hazel took the sting out of that. Lois often followed that treatment up with some antibiotic ointment or Eucerin cream. The chaffing problem might get worse when we start working in the dusty, dry hay and sweating all the time. Thank goodness we all wore gloves or Lois would have been treating blisters, too.
I think everyone slept pretty well that night, but started slowly the next morning. The stiffness and soreness were more evident now, especially for Dad’s generation, but the younger ones felt it too. Dean likened it to the morning after the first practice of a new sport’s season. After all that running and using muscles you hadn’t used for a while, your body had a way of letting you know. But we got the regular chores done in good time and once again used the Brutus-pulled wagon to head to the hayfield. This time we took along every pitchfork we could find on the place.
“We have to remember to bring several back with us tonight,” Larry said, “to feed the cattle.”
When we arrived at Butch’s, his crew wasn’t too quick to join us. Definitely some of them were not accustomed to working the way we had on “Labor” Day. The job this morning was to turn the hay. With a power driven machine, it was called tedding. To start, we lined up all 35 people along the end of the field, each with either a pitchfork or a couple with Poppop’s rakes. The purpose was to get the partially wilted hay up off the ground, spread it apart, knock the dew off, and hopefully have it end up with the wettest stalks of hay on top for the sun to work at.
In the beginning we watched as Dad, Harvey, Larry, Jake, and Josh demonstrated. Each had their own style. Dad just took a forkful and flipped it over to expose the wet hay underneath. Harvey took every forkful and shook it apart. Larry would hold the fork backward and rake the hay toward him like an oar, leaving it fluffed up. Josh tended to lift every forkful waist high, and then fling it a far as he could throw it, spreading it in a wide pattern. Jake just kept flailing from side to side, scattering the hay in both directions.
I’m sure one way might have been better than another, but Dad said, “Just so we get it distributed and setting up so the air can flow through it. The tricky part is not to step on it after it’s been fluffed.” Therefore, once we were away from the end of the field, it was better if we moved backward, facing the hay we had already turned. We soon caught on – everyone using their own style. It was fun; throwing hay all over the place - had to be careful though, not to get too close to the person next to you. We also found out how poorly we had cut some of the hay the day before. Often, when I’d grab a forkful, some of the individual stalks were not completely severed. It then took a little effort to rip them free.
Our motion took us away from the barn and our water, though. In about an hour and a half we had reached the halfway mark in the field. “Time for water everyone,” Harvey yelled, “let’s take a break.” After drinking, we walked all the way to the back end of the field and worked toward the barn. It gave us a more positive feeling – psychologically - always moving toward our goal. We were done before dinner.
“Looks good,” Larry said, “now let’s mow a bit more, before we eat. What do you think, Pop?”
“Grab the scythes,” was Harvey’s answer. We mowed about an hour, until Clare called us in for dinner. We didn’t need to eat in the hot sun today. She had a tremendous pot of vegetable soup on her outside cook fire, made with the pork from Roger. It had plenty of broth and tons of vegetables, many that Poppop had brought up that morning. After the filling meal, cool drinks, and a short rest, out we went to mow some more.
When we had about six acres mown (about ¾ of what we mowed the day before), Harvey said, “Let’s pack it in. We’ve a little work to do in the barn for tomorrow.”
You see baled hay in its comparatively compact package with twine for handles, can be carried fairly easily to the horses or cattle that you’re feeding. Loose hay’s a bit more difficult, so Harvey needed to find a spot in the barn where it would be both easy to unload from the wagons and convenient to fork down a hole in the barn floor near where the horses were fed. Fortunately, Butch’s barn, like Harvey’s, was of the old style that had two stories – a lower level, we called the bottom of the barn, where the animals were housed, and an upper level, we called the top of the barn, where hay, grain and equipment were stored. In different locations around the top of the barn, holes were left in the floor to drop feed down to the animals below. We called the holes hay holes. To some extent they were dangerous, generally uncovered most of the time. There were few kids raised on a farm that hadn’t fallen through one sometime in their life. I was no exception. Heck, sometimes we jumped on purpose, if there was something soft to land on. The vintage barn that Butch had was a throwback, specifically designed for the handling of loose hay and straw, so he had no problem choosing a spot to store the hay we were to bring in the next day. We only needed to clean up about a half an hour to make the site ready.
Wednesday was the big day - eight acres of hay to bring in - another six laying. The weather appeared like it was going to cooperate – wind out of the west, blowing early in the morning, with low humidity. There was no dew left on the hay by the time we reached the fields. First we turned the hay we had mown on Tuesday, and then jumped to our original eight acre patch.
Now Poppop’s rakes came into play. Because it was mown earlier, the hay around the outside of the field was the driest. In the middle of the field, it had more moisture; the phrase we used to describe it was “it was tough” or “not fit” (for harvesting). In the corner of the field, the eight people with the rakes started shoulder to shoulder, pulling about ten feet of the scattered hay toward them – maybe each person two rake widths wide. That way they took about a 40 foot swath down the side of the field. They weren’t fussy about it; just pulled the hay together, and then stepped over it and took another ten feet. Meanwhile, the rest of us with pitchforks, gathered any hay missed by the rakes and formed it into a continuous fluffy pile, so that the drying air could flow through it. We also kept an eye out for any really tough hay and make sure that it was well off the ground, preferably right on the top of the windrow so the sun could hit it directly.
“You know,” Dad said, “for forty-five years I’ve been calling these rows of hay, that we made with machines, windrows, without giving much thought to why. Now that I’m making them by hand, I can understand.”
“It’s a row of hay, set up so the wind can go through,” I offered.
“You got it,” he answered.
From the time we started raking, it would probably take about four or five hours of good drying to be fit enough to safely store in the barn. It was well past dinner time when we had the whole field raked up.
“No problem,” Dad had said, “it might be pretty late until we quit up here this evening; supper might be late, too.”
After dinner the hay wasn’t as dry as Harvey and Butch would have liked it. “Always a trick,” Harvey told the group. “You want to have very dry hay on the bottom of the pile in the barn - makes less chance of spoilage. Still you want to get started as soon as you can, so you can finish before running out of daylight.”
Just because we couldn’t start loading, didn’t mean there wasn’t work to do. Back to field #2 we went – the one we had mowed six acres of on Tuesday.
“Let’s mow some more,” Harvey directed. “It’ll give us hay to put away Friday. Why should we waste this good weather?” For hay making – yes, good weather; Harvey had hit it. For working – today was the hottest so far this week. People’s attire had changed somewhat, too. There were a lot more long sleeves, wide brimmed hats, and handkerchiefs tied around some necks. A few people had been sunburned the last couple afternoons. I admired the men who grabbed the scythes. They ached already and with a lot more work to do today, common sense might have told them to rest and store up some energy for the looming tasks ahead. But soon the scythes and sickles were swinging away and more hay was being knocked down.
An hour later, with about another two acres cut, Harvey said, “Good enough, let’s start loading.” We all got a fresh drink of water, set a little spell, and then Harvey and Butch headed into the field. Each had a team of horses with a wagon. About 15 people climbed aboard Harvey’s and went to the far end of the field. Butch stopped at the near end. We reversed the roles we had the day before. Today the men had both the pitchforks and the meat of the job. They plunged their forks into the piles of hay and then “pitched” it onto the wagon. As the pile increased, a couple boys climbed onto the wagon to “pitch” the hay higher and get as full a load as possible.
This time, I had a rake, and was relegated to gathering together the last few stalks of hay that the “pitchers” had left behind. The process really didn’t take too long – there were four of us raking and at least a dozen with pitchforks. We actually had to stay out of each other’s way. Before the wagon was full, Clare and Ben came out with the third team and an empty wagon. The switch was easy, but this second load would take much longer to fill, for the eight strongest loaders went back to the barn with Butch to unload the first wagon.
“Just pace yourselves,” Dad said. “From the looks of it, you’re all getting the knack of it.” I watched Butch and company as they neared the barn. They drove the wagon straight into the barn, close enough to where Butch wanted the hay piled and allowing enough room to unhitch the horses from the wagon, wiggle around it, and bring the team out of the barn to yet another empty wagon. They hitched it up, and then Butch drove it right past us toward Harvey’s crew. By the time Butch reached them, their wagon was full; a switch was made and back came Butch with another full load and four more men to help unload it. When he reached the barn the first wagon was empty – another switch and back to the field. What planning. Load after load, teams switching wagons, workers switching tasks. I even tried tossing hay onto the wagon for a spell.
We didn’t work non-stop. A couple times we’d just sit in the shade a few minutes. There were water breaks for the horses and drink breaks for us. Clare had prepared a concoction that was to be like Gatorade, that her family had used long before Gatorade was invented. It was water flavored with lemon juice, sweetened with honey, and some vinegar and a little salt added. It was OK, I’m no fan of vinegar, but it was supposed to keep our electrolytes balanced and provide us with stamina and energy. Must have worked: we just kept going. The job was getting done.
By late afternoon, six of the unloaders left for Harvey’s for milking chores, slowing things up a bit. But I believe we only had two loads of hay left laying in the field. An hour later, the field was clean with all four wagons full.
Inside the barn, the task was getting tougher. The first loads of hay were easily thrown down off the wagon onto the floor. Now, however the hay had to be thrown up for the pile was over eight feet high. Then others standing on the pile threw the hay even higher. I finally got to help in the barn and out of the sun, but now I realized another purpose for those long sleeved shirts and handkerchiefs – the dust. And even though I thought it was hot outside, inside it was stifling. The heat collected under the roof of the barn and the higher the pile of hay grew, the hotter it got. No wonder the men were rotating in and out of the barn all day – another benefit to numbers.
It went pretty fast though, what with two dozen plus forks in the barn at the same time. Right after we started the second to last load, Josh, Jake, and Uncle Jeremiah came back from milking.
“Is it that late?” Dad asked, “that you guys are finished with the milking already?”
“We milked our cows,” Josh said, “then Larry said he, Joe and Harvey could clean-up and feed all the animals. We needed to bring Brutus back, to haul everyone home and besides, we figured you were wearing out.”
“Naw, we’re still in great shape,” Butch huffed. “But appreciate it just the same. Why don’t you two young guys climb up in the pile?”
When the wagon was empty, Ben said, “Fourteen down, one to go.”
“We did fifteen loads today?” Mel asked.
“Yep,” Ben answered, “time flies when you’re having fun.”
Uncle Jeremiah and I got the last forkfuls of hay on the wagon. He stuck his fork into the final remnant, lifted it up and said, “There it is! That’s what I’ve been looking for all afternoon!”
“Did you lose something?” I asked gullibly. “What were you looking for?”
“The last forkful!” he laughed along with everyone else. It was an old joke and I fell for it, but I vowed not to let it happen again.
“The wagons can stay where they are until tomorrow,” Butch announced. “Bring my horses to the front of the barn so we can take off their harnesses, feed them and loose them in the pasture.”
That finished, we started climbing on board the wagon hitched to Brutus for the trip home when Josh said, “Wait! There’s something I need to do, yet.” He ran across the pasture, took off his shoes and leaped into Harvey’s pond. Didn’t take long for the rest of us to follow suit. None of us stayed in very long, however. Harvey’s pond was only a couple degrees warmer than spring water. Most of us jumped in, screamed, and popped right out again. Cooled us off though, and washed off the dust, sweat, and grime of a day’s hard work.
We repeated that day’s hard work on Thursday and Friday, then several more times in the ensuing weeks. A few more acres at Butch’s farm, and then several acres at Harvey’s other rented farm; that hay we brought home for Harvey’s animals. In all, it gave a nice pile of hay in the two barns. Mission accomplished; we made hay while the sun shone.

To be continued……. Mort