Howdy friends and neighbors. There can’t be anything under my hat this week because it left western Oklahoma and is now somewhere in south Texas!! It was up in Kansas a few days ago, then I watched it go back by Saturday afternoon. Whew! It’s been windy here. A friend of mine just decided that he loves the wind. Yep, he allowed hating it wasn’t doing any good so he thought he would just try loving it. Several years ago I was complaining about the wind blowing one day and an older, wiser gentleman looked at me with a puzzled look and asked, “What else is the wind supposed to do?”
The other night some friends were over and as we scarfed down some thick, juicy rib eye steaks the conversation turned (somehow) to hauling hay. Primarily hauling little square bales of hay. Then it hit me. Here’s a topic I could write an entire book about! I believe that every person that has a sliver of a tie to a farm or ranch has a story to tell about hauling, stacking, baling, feeding, sitting on, standing on, laying on, or building forts for a good gourd fight out of, small square bales of hay. It was fun to listen to the stories of my friends and family as they told about the good old days and making good money hauling hay. And yes, even I have several stories about my hay hauling days. The difference is that I don’t remember making good money doing it. Of course it wasn’t the hauling that bothered me, it was the stacking that I didn’t like. It seems that the whole time I was bucking bales up several tiers, I was thinking to myself that there had to be a better way. I would think to myself, “why didn’t they just use a round baler?”
I best stop here and define some of the lingo that the unofficial hay haulers club uses for some of my readers that would be lucky enough to have never been around it.
First, a square bale: this is a machine built unit of edible forage or bedding for livestock or urban cowboy weddings. It is officially called “square” but there is nothing square about it. It mostly looks rectangular if the baler’s “knotter” is set properly and both wires or twine are the same tension. If not, the bales could resemble a banana, a cucumber, or maybe a wore out radiator hose.
Knotter: (which doesn’t appear to be in Microsoft Windows’ spell check) is the highly irritable device on a square baler that must be in perfect time and rhythm with the body of the beast (the baler). Its purpose is to evenly tie the wire or knot the twine around the bale as it moves through the chamber.
Bucking bales: this term simply means to muscle bales weighing from six pounds to one hundred and sixty pounds (and it is possible for bales of this wide weight range to be right next to each other in a field) from ground level to heights that require FAA permits, all while in a confined space that resembles a convection oven (but at least there is limited air movement so wind chill isn’t a factor.)
The Rig: this refers to the wore-out, 2-ton truck with a flat deck for transfer of hay from field to stack. It seems that new trucks are ineligible for this chore.
Loader: some hay haulers are fortunate enough to possess this device. When functioning, this apparatus hooks to the truck or trailer while in the field and mechanically transfers the bale from the ground up to the hauling deck. This machine usually requires a complete set of Craftsmen tools, a blacksmith, a Lincoln Welder, a hammer and a pair of CeeTee pliers in order to stay operational.
And finally, “down the hall and to the left.” This lingo usually signals to the would-be haulers to instantly become three weeks behind in their hay hauling jobs. The prospective employer wishes for the haulers to stack his 130-pound bales of prize hay in an old, abandoned house! There usually are no lights nor windows and skunks, spiders, and snakes are all potential obstacles. And, of course, the haulers need to start in the back bedroom closet.
I’m Monte Tucker, and that is what’s under my, “I’m two months behind” hat.
