Talking the number of strings on a bale of hay does seem a little extreme, but I’m not suprised at all that there is a discussion is based on the issue. Modern farmers are investing literally $100,000s in new machinery and they have to make sure it will pay for itself before it wears out. If your bales don’t suite your customers’ needs you have a big problem.
To give you an example, one of my relatives farms grain and corn on the Bruce Penninsula in Ontario, Canada. He has his own property plus he does a lot of contract work for other farmers. His crop sprayer alone cost more than $500,000 Cdn. He replaces it every three years!
Each tractor is also worth about $1/2 million and he has one tractor for every implement he uses! Obviously his operation is far bigger than a typical Ontario farm but it shows the importance farmers place on the productivity of their equipment. These guys are talking about their livelyhoods so what may seem frivolous to us is food on the table to them.
[soapbox] I hope this doesn’t come across as a lecture. Not my intent.
What’s funny is that all I was pointing out was that in the upper midwest a 3 string baler is rare. And if you all want some modeling fun, use 3 string bales out west to be loaded into 40 shipping container for export. In the midwest we have loaded boxcars (50 footers) with our standard 2 string small bales to be shipped to drought areas out west.
String? String?–Bailer??–Our hay was put up loose, cut in the field, used a kick tedder to turn it, and a trip rake to put in rows. We had a rick that the hay was forked into. walked down. In the barn we had a beam clamp with a pulley, through which we had a shot of 1 inch sisal rope-tied into a hay fork. The fork was jammed into the hay-a lever was set causing a short arm on the lower part of the fork to come out-this would catch the hay. The fork was pulled up and when it was over the mow, a second rope was pulled causing the hay to release from the fork. Our barn held 250 ton of hay, which was cut on the property. If Dad thought the hay was too green, or damp, he would throw rock salt between the layers to prevent spontaneous combustion. As a young man in Watkins Glenn NY, he saw two barns burn down in 1911 due to green hay. Our neighbor down the road did all the work with a pair of Percherons, Dad gave him enough hay for the team, we stored it, and had what we needed for the goat, sheep, and beef critter. Our neighbor was the last of the true woodcutters who used a team for logging-and haying, and plowing.
His sickle bar was a sulkey rig with a 6 foot bar, one advantage he had over the other farmers was soft ground didn’t bother him.
Ike had a wagon that he used for transportation, once a month he would take it to town, about 5 miles. On one occasion he was half way across the Kennebec River Bridge headed into Bath, when the Portland train came down from Rockland, the smoke and steam coming up on both sides of the roadway spooked the team, and he nearly ran down a 47 Ford pick up. After that he worked a deal with Dad-he would do all our plowing, and twitch in our firewood, if Dad would take him to town once a month. It worked out all the way around.
As a pup there were four saltwater farms in our area, the other three had tractors that they used, we had Ike’s team, none of us had a hay bailer–saw a picture of one once in a magazine at a 4-H meeting.
My how things have changed! People back then were able to make do.
My ancestors were the second family of pioneers to settle just south of where Barrie, Ontario is now. That was 1823. There are lots of tales told, some of them perhaps rather tall, of the work they did. Even if there has been some exaggeration added in over the years, the bottom line is that today most of society really doesn’t know what a hard day’s work is.
Yeah me too. I spent many a summer “doing hay” on the family farm (one twine for your left hand, one twine for your right!) and another summer scrubbing parts in a tool and die shop. Now I spend my days in a semi-cushy office getting eye strain as a result.
If I remember our old bailer (still remember the pain of a bailing run), you could set it up different ways as to length of bail and number of ties, ours used twine and you could not use gloves working the unloading part as they would get trapped uner the twine as you threw them off the bailer.
Been chuckling a bit about this thread… I was born and raised on a dairy farm in the Town of Hopewell, Ontario County NY. Hay balers used in the field were quite uncommon until about the time I was born (1946). I can remember several farmers in the area used to get together and work on each others farms during haying season. At lunch time all the women folk put on a huge meal for everyone. I remember riding on my fathers lap on the Ford 8N pulling what was most commonly used on the farms… One of these:
Originally a team of horses pulled a 4 wheel wagon over the windrows of raked hay that had that contraption behind it. What you see in the photo is the back end of the machine. A couple people worked with 3 tine hay forks to stack the hay on the wagon. When the wagon was full to capacity, the wagon was hauled to the barn where a huge hay hook was used to pick the hay up using a block and tackle (I still have the block and tackle from our barn) and a tractor or a horse moved the hay to the mow where it was stored loose. If the hay was being sold, then you hired a guy to come in with a stationary baler usually run by a steam belt tractor to make bales. These were fairly large and two men worked all day hand securing baling wire to the bales. My grandmother used to tell me about that, I never actually saw it.
First baler we ever used was the Alice Chalmers round baler that was first produced in 1947 (invented around 1920). My father used to be able to borrow one to do our hay from a “rich” neighbor who had one. Field usable square, two wire or string balers became the norm by the 1950’s. I was by then old enough to actually drive the tractor and do most of the baling myself… Those we used to borrow from the “Dead Letter Office” at Don Howard’s Farm Machonery (My Father’s cousin)
The bailer I used was a small affair proubly 1/4 the size of that one, though I remember seeing one of those on the farm that was no longer used (that along with a bunch of farm stuff ended up in a provential museum.
In all the bails of hay/straw I’ve pulled from the ground, pulled up onto, and stacked on the flatbeds pulled behind the tractor, I don’t recall ever having time to count/care about how many wires were on it. I was more worried about not getting cuts and blisters on my hands.
It is funny though. On another forum the recent question was “What scene have you never seen on a model railroad”. My post was that I have seen bailed fields but never an active hay bailing scene.
Grew up on farms, grandpa’s and step dad. Iowa (step dad) was mostly wire tied, two, 16ga. wire. the same wire used to tie rebar. Wisconsin (grandpa’s farm) was twine tied, two twines, bales were much lighter than wire tied.
Never seen, or heard of, bales tied with three. I’m a Wisconsin native, moved to Iowa after mom remarried.
