FALL SEASON – David Sobieski
To understand how much work it was to operate the farm, one needs to describe the era of the equipment used. Before tractors, work horses provided the power to cut, mow and load hay. That meant that the equipment generated power to cut, mow and load was driven by the wheels in motion. If the mower stopped, there there was no energy to cut the hay. After Dad started to buy tractors, and eventually retired the horses (about 1951), the equipment used to farm remained the same, only converted to be pulled by tractor instead of a harness. That was true for the hay mower, hay rake, hay loader, and corn binder.
Later, with the addition of tractors, equipment used to chop corn or hay could be powered directly from the tractor. Farming no longer progressed at the speed of a team of horses. However, all of the horse powered equipment still remains on the farm today, in various locations and stages of condition. Some of the equipment, such as the hay mower and rake, were pulled by the little Alice B tractor and continued to be used until farming came to an end on the Sobieski farm.
When grains needed to be harvested in the 30’s and 40’s, the cut fields of oats would be brought to the barn, where a thrasher would be waiting. Farmers only needed thrashers in the fall, and usually one thrasher would serve many farms. The owner would pull his thrasher from neighbor to neighbor, and neighbors would all join in to help with the harvesting. Joan told me that she remembers carrying water up to the neighbors working the equipment in the hot, dry and dusty conditions.
Thrashers were designed to operate in on place, usually powered by a belt driven by a tractor or steam engine. I don’t remember a thrasher at the farm, but they are still visible on sides of fields from days gone by.
Harvest time in the fall was an ongoing event, interrupted only by bad weather and Sundays. My earliest recollection of taking hay off a field was driving the little tractor which was pulling a wagon, which was pulling a hay loader connected to the back of the wagon. The hay loader lifted the row of cut dry hay up over the back of the wagon. Ten wheels in motion, with the last two wheels proving the power to turn the chains on the hay loaded. The chains drove the mechanical spindly fingers that rotated and lifted the hay off the field, and reciprocating arms that pushed it up the metal slide, only to drop it on the back of the wagon, where my brother or Dad, fork in hand would distribute the load of hay over the wagon. The most challenging trick as the tractor driver would be to swing wide enough around the corners so the wagon followed by the hay loader, wouldn’t miss any hay on the turn.
This hay was not chopped, so it was as long as it was tall before cutting. The entangled rows of dry hay allow farmers to unload it in large bunches.
With a full wagon load, the hay loader was unhooked and the wagon was driven to the upper level of the barn, the wagon creaking from the heavy load as it was pulled up the hill. There we would back it into the middle of the upstairs, directly under the hay fork. A better name would have been the claw, as that was it’s purpose. The hay fork was suspended by 1’ thick hemp rope, from a trolley that rode a steel rail track along the very top of the barn roof. The wagon would be positioned over the fork hanging from the trolley. The tractor would be unhooked from the load of hay, and connect to another rope running through a series of big wooden pulleys, that ran along the steel track to the trolley. The hay fork would be dropped into the load of hay, operating like a claw machine trying to lift a stuffed toy at an arcade. Inching the tractor forward, the hay fork would scoop up a load of hay, and lift it up over the wagon before it began it’s journey to the east side of the hay loft. The rules at the time were simple. Hay would travel on the east track of the loft, straw for bedding would be diverted to the west track.
I still to this day have a visual of my Dad riding on the load of hay as it lifted off the wagon on it’s journey. Over the loft, he would jump down on the loft and start swinging the load of hay to get it into position to drop. Dad didn’t use a lightweight pole to push against the load. I remember he used a long branch from a tree, complete with all the bark. I also remember to this day the noise the entire collection of pulleys, ropes and rails made under the strain of a huge load of hay swinging like a pendulum. I wouldn’t call it a creak or squeak, it was more like the equipment was screaming from the stresses of the load. I was glad I was too small to work the loft. There was another rope line that was connected to the release of the hay fork, that upon the command “trip it”, I would pull resulting in the load being released and falling to it’s desired position in the loft. Of course this wasn’t an exact science. There would be hell to pay your timing was off, and the load was not delivered on demand. It was also potentially, deadly. I recall the noise, wondering it was going to snap from all the force. Of course it never did.
For a video on how Adam harvested hay in the early years, check out this youtube video of the Amish using the same implements.
Today, the ropes, most of the pulleys, the trolley and the hay fork still hang in the upstairs of the barn, silent for 55 years. After the hayloader / trolley and fork method was retired in the late 50’s, we switched to a tractor powered chopper that cut the hay in the fields, and blew it into wagons. It became a one person operation, and much faster. This continued until we finished farming in the early 70’s.
To watch how a load of hay would be lifted by the horses then ride the rail to be dumped like Adam did in the barn, watch this video. You can skip forward to 40 seconds. In this video, these farmers are using a chain instead of a metal fork. The ropes, pulleys and trolley remain hanging in the barn today.
LIFE LESSON’S LEARNED . When there is a job to do, it has got to be done. Whining isn’t going to feed the cows, and the cows aren’t going to feed themselves in the winter.
SCIENCE LESSONS LEARNED. Machines can be designed to do wonderful things. The hay loader was simple in purpose, but a wonder of engineering to a young mind. It could transfer the seamless motion of a rotating axle into a multitude of simultaneous motions, counter rotating, linear motion oscillation motion. I didn’t know what all the terms were when I was five years old, but I know it was a marvel in motion. There were gears turning wheels in the opposite direction of the machinery’s direction (to pick up the hay). I learned that a little gear meshed next to a big gear had to do more revolutions per minute, thereby move faster. There were synchronized arms, half moving in opposite direction from the other half, that were coaxing the hay of the slide. Yet is was a simple machine. If the tractor stopped, it stopped. Motion provided the only energy it needed to do it’s job.
The hay loader was not a killing machine. By that I mean it didn’t contain spinning knives or blades that could remove an arm, leg or head. Because of that, I remember watching it close as it worked the rows of hay. It was ingenious.
The other life lesson was the power of pulleys. The ability to transfer power from one direction to another. You could fill a barn with a big rope, and five pulleys. More important than the simple pulley is the ingenious compound pulley (invited by the mathematician ….. about 200 years BC). The best use of the compound pulley we had was a fence tightener. Through the leverage of a compound pulley, we would tighten a barbed wire down a fence line, before tacking it in place. Powerful stuff, but you never wanted to get in the way if it snapped or the pulley broke.
That’s life on a dairy farm.