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My two older sisters had to work in the fields. Sis #1 remembers parking the tractor when she was 5. Sis #2 fell from the tractor and was almost run over by the stalk cutter pulled by the tractor. A pure miracle she was not horribly injured by the cutting blades. Both sisters hoed fields, bucked hay, drove tractors, whatever was needed to keep the fields and crops growing.
The year our family went on vacation to Yellowstone National Park my sisters wanted to go to the lake with friends. Daddy was a hard taskmaster. He said no to the lake visit. In fact, Daddy made the girls, 14 and 10 years old, hoe the field by the main road to the lake. They had to see all the cars go by filled with friends going to the lake. Daddy hoed, too. Decades later Sis #1 and Sis #2 gave Daddy a bill with interest added for the July 4th day's labor. It was a running joke for years.
Back to the hay baling tale from Daddy. During the late 1940s and 1950s hay bales were rectangular bales. Bales were between 40 and 75 pounds (2.8 - 5.4 stones) in weight. That is a heavy load to toss to about shoulder height! The worker would use a hay hook to grab the bale by plunging the point of the hook into the hay bale. Once Dad missed the hay bale and plunged the hook under his knee cap. He missed a few days of hauling hay.
Oh, my. I continue to digress. Daddy's story was about the farmer who worked the bottomland. The bottomland grew other things besides the hay. Snakes. Not just the good snakes but copperheads and cottonmouth. Both snakes are poisonous. Daddy said it was not unusual for copperheads to be hanging out of the bales. The snakes had been picked with the hay/straw and were embedded in the bale. The snakes would attempt to strike as the workers came near the bale to buck the hay onto the trailers. There may have been a gun or two to dispatch the pit vipers. Daddy never said for sure but it is Texas. Guns likely involved.
Any of you folks planning on bucking hay, please, watch out for the snakes.
Peace,
Janice
