Nice smell, but, oh, those bales were heavy for a young kid. And the blazing sun was relentless, and the barest touch of a breeze felt so good. The sweat pored down on your face and into your eyes, and dust and crumbled hay stuck to your face as you stumbled while slowly carrying a bale toward a hay stack. Then using your back, knee and arms to lift and stack that bale in place. Remember how your pant legs would eventually be worn through by the sharp alfalfa stems so that those stems would then scratch on bare skin. Such golden memories. Yes indeed.
Do you remember feeling exhausted after stacking that one bale, then going back to get another?
Oh yeah, the smell of clover; great aroma.

Oh, Lordy, do I remember!

The back breaking strain of piling each one precisely onto first the wagon for the trip in from the fields, and then off the wagon to the conveyor belt that took the bales up into the loft of the dairy barn.

We were lucky in that our baler made the "small" bales of 75 lbs each–the more common was the 150 lb bales.

Doing that all day long, AFTER finishing the morning 5 a.m. milking, and then making sure you're back to do the 5 p.m. milking as well….long, long days.

Getting burnt as brown as a nut by the relentless sun, and being glad of it, because overcast means a chance of rain and rain can lay ruin to a whole field of hay if the bales get soaked before you can get them under cover.

I worked for two summers doing that and more at a school friend's family dairy farm. And after that first backbreaking day I can remember that old farmer coming up to me where I hung on to the edge of the flatbed in exhaustion (so that I wouldn't fall down). He looked me straight in the eye and said "You're a keeper." then clapped me on the shoulder before going on to his next chore. I was SO proud of myself that day!

Filed under: alfalfa hay

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