Youth is wasted on the young....

[STRYKER]

Wife, two teenagers and I loaded and unloaded 500 bales of hay thru the weekend.
These guys pushed all day, and when 6:00 came this evening, they were ready to shower and hit the town....

I remember when I could....but the remainder is a blur...
I'm going to sleep now.

 

[ChiXJeff]

Heh........... bet you did that all with small square bales, and without a bale thrower. That sounds like WORK.

When Dad was still raising beef cattle, we'd routinely put up over 12,000 bales of hay and straw every. With my brother on the baler (yes, with a thrower,) Dad in the barn, and me ferrying wagons, and baling right next to the barn, we put 500 bales in the barn in an hour. We've never been close to that, either before or after.

ChiXJeff

 

[STRYKER]

Heh........... bet you did that all with small square bales, and without a bale thrower. That sounds like WORK.

When Dad was still raising beef cattle, we'd routinely put up over 12,000 bales of hay and straw every. With my brother on the baler (yes, with a thrower,) Dad in the barn, and me ferrying wagons, and baling right next to the barn, we put 500 bales in the barn in an hour. We've never been close to that, either before or after.

ChiXJeff

I'm impressed. That's rolling along.
All of this was Timothy/orchard grass in really tight square bales that averaged 70 lbs. each.

At my age, I'm glad that I only have to do this once a year.

 

[ChiXJeff]

Dad grew primarily alfalfa for the cattle. Okay, it started as alfalfa seeded down with winter wheat, after a couple of years, the grass started to move in. The bales were 55-60 lbs. each. 70 lb. bales are going to be a handful. Normally, we'd try for 1,000 bales a day in hay. BTW, one thing that helped was that Dad didn't care if he had a square bale in the barn. We just tumbled them off the end of the elevator, and stacked a couple of rows to keep the hay from falling over into the machinery.

Conditions that day were darned near perfect. Upper 70s, light breeze, perfect humidity (you know what happens in the afternoon!) And baling next to the barn so transit time was almost nothing.

Anyway, no more. Dad is getting up there in years, and lost his shirt on cattle too many times, and the same with cash crop corn (the cherry orchards have always paid the bills.) All of the fields have been seeded with alfalfa, and he's selling the hay, cut, in the field.

 

[gr8tires]

I've watched many farmers work their fields doing what you guys are talking about. It always looked like hard work, and I'm sure it is. I've never done something like that, and probably would give myself a heart attack(or a busted back) if I tried now.
Take the night off, guys......

 

[STRYKER]

I've watched many farmers work their fields doing what you guys are talking about. It always looked like hard work, and I'm sure it is. I've never done something like that, and probably would give myself a heart attack(or a busted back) if I tried now.
Take the night off, guys......

Kinda like masons refer to 12" cinder block as "birth control block".... No babies that night. Not even a practice session.

 

[ChiXJeff]

Believe it or not, Dad's setup wasn't that bad. Much of the time, we didn't even need to get up in the wagon.

The baler has a thrower on it. The wagons are actually old converted silage wagons, with a steel floor, solid wood sides (tongue & groove) and an open top. There is a sliding gate that starts the trip at the front of the wagon with a pair of cables that run under the load to an axle across the rear of the wagon. Load up the wagon, and pull it up to the barn.

Back it up to the elevator, and open the rear door. This is a full width door hinged at the top, about 6' tall. Put a gearbox on the end of the axle with the cables. Using a bale hook, start pulling bales off the wagon and on to the elevator. After you get about a third of the load off, start the motor on the gearbox. This will pull the rest of the load back to you at a couple of inches per second. Usually, we could get just about a hundred bales in the wagons without stacking at the front. And only a couple of bales would fall over the frame at the front end.

If we were pulling a couple of loads a distance, we could do some stacking in the wagons and get around 130 bales in each one.

I have never seen anybody else put up hay like this. It cuts out at least 2 if not 3 guys handling it. But it only works if you don't care about nice square bales.

BTW, Dad's wagons are older than I am. And *STILL* will track straight behind the truck with a full load in each at 35 mph.

 

[HossHoffer]

Oldster

Yah, I remember too those days of throwing hay around. I wish I had a nickle for every bale I bucked I'd be a ........... hey wait a minute. I did get a nickle for every bale I bucked and I'm still not a millionaire!

 

[FarmerMatt]

You guys are pansies. Alfalfa baled for daries averages close to 125 lbs. Alfalfa we bale for the feed stores average around 105 lbs (feed stores want it baled lighter to create more bales, we sell by the ton & they sell by the bale ) Now the days of bucking by hand are long gone, but not far from memory. You east cost guys ever here of a hay squeeze or bale wagons? Get with the times, the right tool for the right job.

Matt

http://www.roadrunnermfg.com/roadrunner_hay_squeeze.html

http://www.newholland.com/na/Products/BaleWag.html?Reg=NA&RL=ENNA

 

[Ed A. Stevens]

At the Antelope Valley Fair & Alfalfa Festival (Lancaster, CA) they have a traditional show called the Rural Olympics. Some of the events are tractor & sickle bar races, truck and transfer maneuver and backing races, bailing machine races, and the highlight event is hay loading. The events are modeled around the tasks experienced when working an alfalfa ranch (what the entrants work at for a living).

Rural Olympics Info

The hay loading event task is to load the bailing race stacks from on the ground onto trucks, and then unloaded to the ground after moving the truck. The stacks have to be neat to travel, and neat on the ground to prevent time penalty. The use of a loading truck is allowed with two person teams. There is usually six to eight teams entered. The first team to load the truck is not always the one that wins, and the competition is always close in the final minute.

While most Rural Fairs have livestock judging and auctions for the kids, I have never witnessed this style of competition anywhere else. You may have found your competition?

This style of competition could become an event tradition, with loading and unloading a set campsite equipment list under timed conditions, or R&R of a drivers side D30 front axle shaft under timed conditions (real world tasks for the average enthusiastic XJ owner & offroader). These kinds of "after the run" evening competitions are lots of fun and offer ideas to those who have not tried the tasks before (safe packing, jacking, unloading, and campsite tricks).

 

[ChiXJeff]

<grin> We'd NEVER place in the competitions, Ed. </grin> We just don't care about keeping the bales square, or travel...... The AV Fair seems to be more comprehensive, but I've heard of the wagon races, etc. before. Still, may have to think about taking it in some year.

One of the neighbors has a NH bale wagon. It also takes a second trip across the field. They (or the hay squeeze) are the only way to go if you're selling hay.

Lessee....... 125 lb. bale. That's gonna be close to 6' long, at least with the cross section I'm used to.

The idea of wrenching contests around the campfire is.....ummmm....... intriguing.

 

[Yucca-Man]

EEeeeshhh - this reminds me of my summers in way-north New York. I learned to drive a tractor long before I had a drivers license, and by the time I had that license I was walking 'longside the wagons throwing 70-100 pound bales all summer. Then we'd unload and unlike some barns we stacked every one of several thousand bales that went in "upstairs"

I came away from those summers with one strong arm for bracing, and one very strong arm for tossing...

 

[tlman]

Deano,

I know what you mean.

Just this weekend my 21 year old worked Friday night until 2, then got up and went boating on the Potomac on Saturday morning. She returned about 8 pm exhausted, and obviously had taken in too much sun, but then remembered that her friends had taken the night off, so they could go up to Georgetown together. So she went upstaris, took a shower and in about an hour was ready to go out again.

Jan an I just looked at each other and realized we remembered doing things like that, but recognized that we no longer want to go out for anything at 10 o'clock. That's what being young is all about. We both made 40 this year and are quite content to leave the allnighters to the kids.

For all I know the girls may have met up with your hay balers.

 

[Ed A. Stevens]

<grin> We'd NEVER place in the competitions, Ed. </grin> We just don't care about keeping the bales square, or travel...... The AV Fair seems to be more comprehensive, but I've heard of the wagon races, etc. before. Still, may have to think about taking it in some year.

<snip>


The idea of wrenching contests around the campfire is.....ummmm....... intriguing.

You may find the Rural Olympics events and rules interesting ...

Rural Olympics Event Rules

Using the concept as a model for Club run evening entertainment can produce good fun (and motivation to keep sober). It can also involve the wife and family (blind driver spotting and backseat direction). The events do not need to be elaborate to be fun and challenging.

I once attended VW buggy events where they staged an engine swap challenge. The record on pavement was less than one minute with tools contained in the bug (CO2 tank, air tools and custom air jack for the engine). The progress from the first competition with a six minute time, to the one minute record, was an amazing creative exercise in logistics and tool design. The resulting engine swap rack/jack was in production and for sale in less than a month.

Who knows what a similar challenge could do to assist XJ repairs?