All About Pocket Knives

I worked on a ranch growing up where we used beaver slides to stack the hay, Big Hole valley Montana, one of the only places left that still do it that way.

I recall one guy we worked for who had a contraption that hooked on the side of the truck or trailer. As it was pulled along the rows it picked up bales and lifted them to the bed where someone picked the bales off it and stacked them. Don’t recall what they called it but it was a ground-driven conveyer, had a belt with teeth which gripped the bale as it was lifted. Haven’t seen one of those in years.

Ken.

I always volunteered to work the wagon because I didn't like working the barn. Yeah you got to sit in the shade of a tree between wagons but that barn was hot and sweaty.

Yes! They had something that looked sort of like these for picking the bales up in the field - we just called it the "loader".


Later, all the hay guys switched to these, which we called a "harrow bed". It was self-propelled and could pick-up the bales, then offload them all into one stack. However, my Dad hated the way they stacked hay. Because each harrow bed offload wasn't interlocked together with the previous load, the stacks could separate and fall. But, this was 100X faster than hand stacking!! The harrow beds could absolutely fly down the field, way faster than you would think they should go!

And, of course, youtube has one in action...

We raised hay for the horse trade,and feeding our cattlewhen I was a kid.We would square bale 22-25000 bales a year.Has I got older,it got harder and harder to find teenagers to help and the year zi graduated high school,I got a loan and bought a round baler.We still baled squares,but only about a 1/3 as much.

Mowing, raking, baling, hauling, and storing hay was a big part of my summer work as boy. None of the farmers had tools to assist in loading trucks and wagons in the field. If you were lucky there was a "hay elevator" that would carry the bales up to the barn loft, otherwise it was throwing the bales up into the loft from truck / wagon. Not a job for candy a***s.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e22J1-J ... uraPlumley[/youtube]

dlr110 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:48 pm Cudgee that picture of the silo is stunning. If I were a photo expert, and of course I’m not, I would say great subject, beautiful color variations, reflections of impending drama…. oh that’s enough of that garbage, it’s a great moment you captured, congrats.

My friend i cannot take your kind compliments, i saw this in an online farming publication that is sent to me. When i saw it, thought that the members in the Miscellaneous Stuff & Things thread might like it. It is a fine photo, but alas i cannot take any credit, but thank you for your kind thoughts. you have a good weekend.

TwoFlowersLuggage wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 8:24 pm Yes! They had something that looked sort of like these for picking the bales up in the field - we just called it the "loader".


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Later, all the hay guys switched to these, which we called a "harrow bed". It was self-propelled and could pick-up the bales, then offload them all into one stack. However, my Dad hated the way they stacked hay. Because each harrow bed offload wasn't interlocked together with the previous load, the stacks could separate and fall. But, this was 100X faster than hand stacking!! The harrow beds could absolutely fly down the field, way faster than you would think they should go!


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Great photos, i remember the side loaders when they started to appear and they were ground breaking technology at the time, and saved many a farmers back.

Boy, Cudgee, you started a good string of posts. Reading all of these brings back memories of hard work in hot weather. No one has yet mentioned snakes embedded in the bale you are stacking, or running from angry bumblebees whose nest was disturbed. As far as the dirty job of stacking in the loft, how about those Red Clover bales? Man, those things were dirty.
The best part, other than the satisfaction of doing a tough job and putting a few bucks in your pocket, was working for a farmer who invited you to the table at the end of the day. I had some memorable meals back in the day while nearly too exhausted to lift a fork.

Waukonda wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:36 pm Boy, Cudgee, you started a good string of posts. Reading all of these brings back memories of hard work in hot weather. No one has yet mentioned snakes embedded in the bale you are stacking, or running from angry bumblebees whose nest was disturbed. As far as the dirty job of stacking in the loft, how about those Red Clover bales? Man, those things were dirty.
The best part, other than the satisfaction of doing a tough job and putting a few bucks in your pocket, was working for a farmer who invited you to the table at the end of the day. I had some memorable meals back in the day while nearly too exhausted to lift a fork.

I can relate a story to your post, the first day we started loading the hay bales, we were given some pieces of hessian to grab the wire with, in those days it was still wire before hay band, shown how to pick up the hay bales and given one other instruction. Always lift the bale up outside edge first, so the inside edge was still on the ground at your feet. And i found out why very quickly.

In between setting and cutting tobacco, we hauled hay when I was a teenager. It paid for many a nights cruising or bowling with our buddies, and dates with our girlfriends. that was back in the good ol days when I was in high school 1990-1994. We worked in hay or tobacco all day, came in, cleaned up, and headed to town. I’d need a good nap in between now.

A farming family at church used to sell straw from their wheat crop and they had wagons behind the tractor that ran off the PTO that picked up, stacked, then dumped the hay. I used to go watch them in amazement.

Cudgee, what kind of snake is that? We used to find snakes in the hay, usually cut in half. Mostly the ones we found were black snakes or chicken snakes, both non venomous.

I recommend getting one of these (if you can afford one). They’re rare and I suspect maintenance and upkeep is very expensive.

Ken

I've "tromped hay" but I've never seen one of those "hay pushers". My, my. That's one fine looking piece of equipment.

I loved to bale straw. So much lighter and the pay was the same. Dollar an hour or a penny a bale.

I worked on a dairy farm in the Spokane valley. I hayed with them for a couple of summers throwing bales on the hay truck.
I was in Kansas for a short time one summer many years ago and I was getting broke and worked hay with a real nice family there. A real great guy and his wife and sons and daughters. All working one way or another to get the hay in. My hands got bloodied from the wire and tossed hay till the cows came home. Good hard work (I was a little soft then, but young) and I got a full tank of gas and some money. Talk about laying out a spread of food. They were something else.

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:40 pm In between setting and cutting tobacco, we hauled hay when I was a teenager. It paid for many a nights cruising or bowling with our buddies, and dates with our girlfriends. that was back in the good ol days when I was in high school 1990-1994. We worked in hay or tobacco all day, came in, cleaned up, and headed to town. I’d need a good nap in between now.

A farming family at church used to sell straw from their wheat crop and they had wagons behind the tractor that ran off the PTO that picked up, stacked, then dumped the hay. I used to go watch them in amazement.

Cudgee, what kind of snake is that? We used to find snakes in the hay, usually cut in half. Mostly the ones we found were black snakes or chicken snakes, both non venomous.

That sir, is a red bellied black snake. They are very common, but not the worst as far as being aggressive go. The one in this photo is an Eastern Brown snake, very very aggressive and poisonous. I have had one strike at me like the one in this pose when i was out checking yabbie nets. Very scary and i nearly you know what myself.

Mumbleypeg wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:50 pm I recommend getting one of these (if you can afford one). They’re rare and I suspect maintenance and upkeep is very expensive.

Ken

They are a fine thing to have, but they are like 2 stroke motors, once they start playing up, they can be a nightmare.

We never had anything like that in the hayfield when I was a kid!

My first driving lesson was at age 6 - One of the hired hands called in sick on hay bale moving day. His cousin said he was probably hungover. Didn't have a clue what that meant back then.

My grandfather wired piece of 2x4 to the brake peddle, put the truck in granny gear and said - "Don't hit the haybales." Then he and his hired hand traded off walking along throwing bales on the truck while the other one stacked the bales on the truck. No one threw the bales up into the hayloft - the bales were pulled up 1 at a time via block and tackle and swung it to be stacked.

After I got my driver's license, my father would pay me and my best friend a nickle a bale (to split) to haul 75 # square bales of alfalfa and put them in the barn. We could stack 48 bales per pickup load. We found out the hard way that if we put another layer above 48, we were too tall to back into the barn.

Most of my hay hauling money went towards buying my first vehicle - a 1966 Ford Galaxy 500. I wanted a pickup but all I could afford that the dealer had used that could hold a tuba (the instrument I played in the HS band) was the Galaxy.

cudgee wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 1:17 am when i was out checking yabbie nets.

Well that one threw me for a loop. Had to look it up & discovered it's a giant crawdad in Australian speak.

"The common yabby (Cherax destructor) is an Australian freshwater crustacean in the Parastacidae family. It is listed as a vulnerable species of crayfish by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), though wild yabby populations remain strong, and have expanded into new habitats created by reservoirs and farm dams.

Other names frequently used for Cherax destructor include the blue yabby or cyan yabby. Its common name of "yabby" is also applied to many other Australian Cherax species of crustacean (as well as to marine ghost shrimp of the infraorder Thalassinidea).

Yabbies occasionally reach up to 30 cm (12 in) in length, but are more commonly 10–20 cm (4–8 in) long.

Colour is highly variable and depends on water clarity and habitat; yabbies can range from black, blue-black, or dark brown in clear waters to light brown, green-brown, or beige in turbid waters. Yabbies specifically bred to be a vibrant blue colour are now popular in the aquarium trade in Australia.

An Australian yabby can travel up to 60 kilometres (37 mi) across land in search of new waters to make its home.

The word "yabby" comes from the Wemba Wemba, an Aboriginal Australian language."
Gleaned from Google.

Thank you for this information. Really. I'm not being sarcastic. I enjoy esoteric knowledge. If a conversation should lag, say at the barbers, I will ask, "Come across any yabbies recently?" That should provoke some interesting dialog.

jerryd6818 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 11:03 am

cudgee wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 1:17 am when i was out checking yabbie nets.

Well that one threw me for a loop. Had to look it up & discovered it's a giant crawdad in Australian speak.

"The common yabby (Cherax destructor) is an Australian freshwater crustacean in the Parastacidae family. It is listed as a vulnerable species of crayfish by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), though wild yabby populations remain strong, and have expanded into new habitats created by reservoirs and farm dams.

Other names frequently used for Cherax destructor include the blue yabby or cyan yabby. Its common name of "yabby" is also applied to many other Australian Cherax species of crustacean (as well as to marine ghost shrimp of the infraorder Thalassinidea).

Yabbies occasionally reach up to 30 cm (12 in) in length, but are more commonly 10–20 cm (4–8 in) long.

Colour is highly variable and depends on water clarity and habitat; yabbies can range from black, blue-black, or dark brown in clear waters to light brown, green-brown, or beige in turbid waters. Yabbies specifically bred to be a vibrant blue colour are now popular in the aquarium trade in Australia.

An Australian yabby can travel up to 60 kilometres (37 mi) across land in search of new waters to make its home.

The word "yabby" comes from the Wemba Wemba, an Aboriginal Australian language."
Gleaned from Google.

" And they are excellent eating ", but watch out for the claws, they can really hurt if they get a good grip of you.

These are some photos of "Yabbies". The biggest i have caught, which is very rare, is about 14 inches long, mostly they are in the 3-6 inch range. The last photo is of one that has been cooked, they turn orange when cooked.

Same here cudgee. Here they’re called crawdads, crawfish, crayfish and probably other names depending on region of the country. Very popular food in the south, usually boiled with corn, potatoes and spices. Lots of other recipes also. A great time can be had every year at the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Big party!

Ken