Baling (our one and only time)

EMG (on Super-M) arrives with bales.  House, lawn, corn crop, St. Joe church - all looking good.

Baling hay was a bigtime task for most farmers when I was growing up on the farm in the '60s and '70s.  But my dad didn't raise livestock, and we didn't have a need for bales.  So we were entirely deprived of the experience.   

Carol and Mary on the lookout for some bales to chuck around.

Baling in those days was another one of those tasks that involved lots of manual labor.  (The method employed then has been almost entirely eclipsed by making hay into huge bales that can be handled entirely by machine.)  Back then, a hard-working farm kid would stack up the bales (formed by machine) on a rack pulled along by a tractor; then the bales were transported from field to farm, and then sent by elevator up into a barn for later use with livestock.  (Of course, even this was heavily mechanized compared to earlier eras.)  The 1970s process is immortalized all over places like youtube these days (for example, take a look at  http://youtu.be/n1ZZoNy5ysY).



Anyway - for whatever reason, the Capesiuses baled hay in 1977 from down on the Ray Gales farm near Livermore, and somebody decided it would be stored in the loft of the barn on the Ernest J. Gales farm on the hill overlooking St. Joe.  We were in charge of getting the bales stacked in the loft.  


Fortunately, we had an elite work force:  Charlie, Carol, Mary and me.  EMG was the brains behind the outfit, of course, and (as such) got to do the tractor driving and general supervising.


Apparently it was a pretty hot July day, though I don't remember it being such.



It was a minor interlude in that summer's work, but I have always recalled it as a very pleasant day.  Several reasons.  It was a novelty task for us.  It wasn't very hard.  And Charlie and I had a lot of fun working with Carol and Mary (who unfortunately were not part of our usual corn shelling crew).  I assume they were more than mascots for this task.  


And, I took a few pictures - which certainly assists memory.  I always liked the top two pictures in this set (even if the second one is a photographic crime).  The top photo shows the hill farm, with St. Joe in the background, when everything was still in very good shape.  Even the Super-M.  Click any to access enlargements of all.


35 years ago this month.

Mary and Charlie loading into elevator.

Me, chucking around bales in barn loft.