[AT] Baling - Still

[Don Bowen]

All this talk about baling reminds me of my farm based youth.  As a 
teenager (later fifties, early sixties) I bucked many bales at a nickel 
a bale.  Up on a farm wagon behind a variety of tractors, Farmall SMTA, 
Farmall H, Ferguson 30, and others.

About the only baler I remember is an AC round baler.  My father would 
bale the last cutting with the round bales and leave them in the field 
where the cattle could get to them.  He claimed the round bales shed 
water and did not rot as quickly.  We rarely picked up round bales but I 
remember one that had a hollow center where some bees had taken up 
residence.  I picked bales up by setting the hook to lift one end, put a 
fist in the center, set the hook at the other end then lift the bale on 
the wagon.  Soft centers were always a problem but those bees 
significantly changed the sequence.

A neighbor built a single axle trailer from a truck bed and some bomber 
tires.  The low deck would allow two more layers of bales.  I have put 
many bales on that trailer and also stacked many bales from that 
trailer.  The low deck made it easy to load but made stacking harder, 
especially the last load of the day.  No front end loaders then.

My mother says that I was put on the tractor at age seven pulling the 
bale wagon.  My father would jump on at the end of the row to turn 
around until I got the hang of it.  That may have been the John Deere A 
we started farming with.

I bucked bales with a couple of friends.  We spent many nights asleep on 
the stack after working from can to can't.  We were  young then, more 
than once coming in from a night of running around just in time to 
change clothes to go back at it.  I was working with a neighbors nephew 
from the big city of Des Moines one time.  We were in a far field and 
had to drive past the home of a girl in my grade.  She chose that day to 
wash the car in her bathing suit.  I suppose it had nothing to do with 
two young boys driving back and forth on the road.  He was watching her 
and dropped a wheel off the edge and dumped about half the load.  I can 
guarantee that loading them the second time was a lot less fun than the 
first time and the girl finished washing the car and left.

-- 
Don Bowen           KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html