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inese wagons were seu-unioaamg. They would feed the chopped hay into a stationary blower that would blast it into the bam. There wasn’t much left but dust by the time you were done.
Now, we have the “big round balers.” These machines literally roll the best of the earlier methods into one. What you have in the end is truly a bale, but these monster rolls of hay, as you see them dotting the fields, do bring back memories of days gone by: those great heaps left by the dumprake to be divided into forkfuls by a cheerful crew of men, women and children. There’s something very nice about a haystack. I’m awfully glad to see them back. But they remind me that something’s missing, too.
When one man, alone, can take his rip-snortin’ diesel tractor into the fields on a Monday, and, with his mower-conditioner, cut and crimp his entire crop; when he can return on Tuesday with his high-speed rake, and rake it all twice, doubling it up the second time around; and when, on Wednesday, he can turn it once with the rake in late morning and round-bale it all in the afternoon — that man is likely to emerge from the experience with the satisfaction of a task efficiently completed - but with the uncomfortable feeling, as well, that he, himself, may be slowly becoming more and more just an exten-' sion, an integral part, of a machine.
There’s ample opportunity to reflect on these changes in haymaking while bringing the bales in from the field. Although a “big round bale” can weigh anywhere from 450 to 1,500 pounds, depending on the capacity of the machine that made it, no help is needed in moving them; one man on a tractor equipped either with a frontend loader or with a rear-mounted bale carrier - or, best of all, with both - can do the job. It’s an easy task, or course,*' and quite satisfying in that you’re carrying home the fruits of the previous three days’ labor.
As I made my way across the field with seven or eight hundred pounds of tightly bound hay in the mighty jaws of the tractor loader, two four-year-old Belgian draught horses watched me from across the fence, never suspecting how different their lives might have been had they been bom 48 years earlier.
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