I stumbled into this and found it fascinating and engaging. Having spent several summers helping out during haying season at a Mennonite farm in Iowa, I assumed the process would be similar. But in these vast valleys of Nevada, things were done differently, in a way I had not seen before. And having stopped at the historic town site of Paradise Valley last summer on XBRO5, this was familiar territory for me.
The laconic narrator–and his young son–adds some distinctive color.
In case you’re interested, here’s some historical info on the Sixty-Nine Ranch where this was filmed.
This film was a treat. Once in my life I got to experience hay baling on the dairy farm run by my mother’s Uncle Gerhard in Minnesota. This was probably around 1969 or 70 when all of their six kids were grown and would come back to help. I was only around ten and a city kid, but was allowed to ride atop one of the hay wagons for part of the day. A hay baler spit big bales out, that were stacked on the wagon that followed.
The day’s big excitement was when the full wagon got stuck in mud and it took 3 tractors to pull it out.
Even as an older adult I still find it amazing to watch the baler, although my days of riding the hay trailer (or throwing bales onto it) are pretty much behind me. I’ve gotten to the point where I now gladly pay extra to have an automated loader grab 10 bales at a time, and drop them neatly onto my trailer!
Like you, Paul, I’m amazed at how different the processes are from what I’m familiar with – and not just the differences in technology that we have, 70 years later.
The biggest difference I see is that they can get away with stacking the hay in huge piles, outdoors in the dry Nevada climate. Try that east of the Plains, and you may end up with a moldy compost pile. Most of the cattle hay around here (at the convergence of Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma) are stored in tight, round bales, and in a hay barn until needed.
Hay for horses (which I’m more familiar with) is often both indoors AND kept covered with a tarp in an attempt to keep fecal matter from opossums and other animals off of it. Opossums are a notorious carrier of equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM), a nasty and sometimes debilitating neurologic disease.
Another city kid here, stranded on a farm in 1972 at the age of 15. I spent a week helping the farm down the road with haying. They had a square bailer, no kicker to help get it into the wagon. Some of the farms in the area were still producing small round bails. I was grateful for the tidier square bails. Now days, everyone seems to do big round bails, though I seem to recall big squares as well. It always seemed like a gimmick by the implement makers to sell more equipment.
the gimmick is to help with the lack of farm labor. Haying is back breaking work. You can handle those big round or giant square bales with tractors and telehandlers rather than manual labor.
I started stacking smaller square bales when I was around 10 years old. I remember by the time I got to 8th grade we had a physical fitness test and most kids couldn’t do a single chinup, I did 13 straight. Nobody was even close.
Hay is an interstate commodity that is loaded on trailers and hauled to a buyer. Large bales are suited to this application. I won’t bore anyone with my haying experiences but this video was eye opening.
Meant to say large square bales. They fill a trailer or a barn much more efficiently than round bales.
This explains why hay in Central Oregon is mostly square bales so it ca be easily exported. Japan actually gets a lot of hay from Oregon, formed into cubes that are about half of a rectangular bale.
Would not want to examine the lungs of those poor workers.
As to the some time explosions, at least, working outside, there is probably no danger.
Here in VT plastic has replaced the (taxable) barns and their hay lofts.
The downside is that we have TONS of waste plastic to dispose of.
That is not the hay dairy farmers in the midwest grow, which is mostly alfalfa and maybe some clover. It is native grass and I don’t believe it is ever tilled and replanted. It dries much easier than alfalfa and is stacked as shown to be convenient to the beef cattle which do not spend time in barns.
A Holstein cow would not produce much milk on Timothy grass, we used to call that stuff “horse hay” because we sold it to horse stables but beef cattle are bred to meat on the hoof with that stuff.
I just happened to come across this very video while looking for Case VAC tractors, which is what those are.
I cannot tell you how interesting tis video and your comments are. City boy, here. i am used to seeing t rolled bales aa now i learned why bales are covered in plastic. The type of hay and the lack of disturbing the natural cycle is important. The explanation from the video is great. Thanks for the enlightenment – all of you. Now, can anyone of you help me? I lost my needle in one of those haystacks.
Nice to see how the larger farms did this .
In the 1960’s we were still using 1930’s equipments and tractors .
Yes, when you spend the Summer tossing hay bales you get strong quick .
-Nate
I had no idea people were still stacking hay in the 1950’s.
My father in law talked about stacking hay on the farm in Missouri when he was a kid, but that would have been in the ’30’s. Also, I think they just used pitchforks to toss it as high as they could off the wagon.
Done hay but oblong bales carted to a barn by truck not haystacks IH balers or New Holland from memory it was a long time ago, now its all round bales plastic wrapped and left in the paddock untill required.
How do the cattle eat the hay without it collapsing on top of them?
A former coworker used to cut, rake, bale, and store hay for his small herd all by himself.
I had the same question — at the video’s end, the narrator pointed out the “old stack from the year before,” which looked to have been used from top to bottom. With the immense land area of these western ranches, I’m curious as to why the hay needed to be stacked quite so high, since it would seem to be more easily utilized in shorter stacks. But I’m no rancher, so I’m sure there’s a simple answer to that question that just never crossed my mind.
This was a terrific video – very interesting to watch and listen to.
each stack has spoilage at the top and at the ground level, so making them taller means less spoilage for a given qty of hay. Also, the height provides compression which decreases the amount of air inside the pile and oxygen is required for spoilage. This is why silo’s work well. coincidentally that is another way to store hay, in a silo as haylage.
Thanks – that part makes sense to me now.
So that’s an actual, real haystack…! Fascinating.
I dare you the find the needle!
Real Power of the Dog territory! Fascinating insight into how labour intensive baling was in the past. Watched it last year on a local farm as I walked through a large field and there were just three people involved in the same process. It is another world.
Fascinating video. All the old ramp barns around here were originally designed to hold loose hay inside. Of course the larger barns are as high as the haystack in the video. A similar system was used, a claw and pulley on an overhead rail to stack the hay to the rafters.
My dad bought a farm 50 years ago with a big old haybarn, half full of loose hay. The farm had failed in the 1930s so the hay was about 40 years old when I first saw it as a kid. It had been cut and stacked but whatever 1930s tragedy that shut down the farm had left unused hay. All the equipment was still there, pulleys, rails and old horse drawn mowers and rakes, all sitting unused for 40 years.
My time spent on a horse farm involved stacking square bales into a loose-hay style barn. Very hard work.