Hay crazy

[bandmiller2]

Still rebuilding that old fergy side delivery rake straightening the tine bars.Rolling them on the mill ways marking where they wobble with chalk then to an old oak tree crotch and pull them straight.Just got 108 new tines from Shoup.Supposed to be high 50's today may just paint that old sucker in January. Frank C.

[mooleycow]

Rufus brought a load of hay this morning from rockymount nc.  still $5.00 a bale.  drought cut them short last year, about 5,000 bales short on  fields  good folks to do business with

[Woodwalker]

Guy has some square hay over at a local convenience  store. It's looks to have been rained on just enough to turn it. It's got a little Bahia, something that looks a little like what I was told is Millet, some weeds and some switch cane. Loose 65# bale for $9.50.

[chain]

Our great-granddad began a alfalfa farm in 1900, they called it the Alfalfa Farming Co. The government built a experimental drying barn that had double walls and air ducts I guess the drying came from natural drafts from wind through the barn. Later when I came along we had about two hundred acres of alfalfa. All other work stopped on the farm during haying... of cutting, raking, baling, and stacking in the barns.

We usually never sold a bale untill the dread of winter, that is, always a snow or ice and the most frigid weather of the season then, at that time, the truckers came to the door to buy up tons of bales of alfalfa, going whereever the market was best. I was always caught with a couple other farmhands as my Dad was the Boss, didn't make any difference, down to the barn I was ordered, often pulling the semi-trucks in with a tractor or two and loading them up. The truckers were masters at stacking the bales just so, as they wanted the leafiest and greenest bales to the outside and sell the whole load at a premium.

We had a crop-duster lease a air strip that was also our alfalfa field. I was raking along one afternoon down the middle and a roaring got louder and louder, just then a double-winged crop-duster came over about ten feet over my head and dropped not over ten yards in front of my tractor and blew hay ever which way. Just part of the job, boy, those were the DAZE!