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 | F350Lawman
Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 411 Goshen, NY 
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2003-08-20 62221
Well I got my first tractor a JD 790 about a month ago and being a city boy from Brooklyn, NY never envisioned myself baling hay!
Today a friend of mine asked me for a hand baling hay, he knows I have the tractor so he let my use his. It was a IH 2444 with a Case 220 baler. I watched him for awhile and then he let me try. It was fun and not really much different from running my 790.
No kicker so throwing the bales onto the wagon wasn't as much fun but was better exercise. :grin:
I have another offer to help the dairy farmer near me bale hay later this week. He mentioned he might need help. His machines are much bigger so this was a good start. He has a JD 4020 and another JD about 1 1/2 - 2 times as big along with a JD630 and a few others. Controls look pretty much the same the size is a little intimidating for a greenhorn like me :o
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 | kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 5764 NW Oregon 
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2003-08-20 62222
Atta Boy! You're one up on me. I gotta start talking to some of the farmers down the road. Maybe they'll let me run some of their big iron one of these days.
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 | TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2003-08-20 62230
Sounds like a good deal all around. Maybe the local farmers will rediscover Tom Sawyer and the white wash bucket. Just think of all the experience.
My first experience at helping with haying was walking behind a tractor along with a cousin and tying old style round bales. Can't really say it was a lot of fun. It was a very hot day and my older cousins who were flinging bales on a lowboy probably were having less fun. No way my uncle was going to give up the tractor seat. Well, we should have yucked it up while tying those bales and maybe it would have pried my uncle out of the seat. No I don't think so, it was a Danish uncle and he was probably more motivated by headaches than fun and I'm sure we qualified as a headache even without trying.
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 | Chief
Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 4297 Southwest MiddleTennessee
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2003-08-20 62253
The last time I baled hay was in Poplarville MS, back in 1979 when I was in the electronics coop. program with the Naval Oceanographic Office. One of my buddies got a job offer to pick up, stack, haul to elevator, and stack in barn loft for I think it was 15 cents a bale. I asked how many bales. He said around 500. We (about 5 of us unsuspecting dolts) were out in the field, ready to go at 0630 but the hay was still wet and had to wait until "noonish" before we could start. Well.........to make a long story short; by about 07:00 AM the next morning and nearly 2,000 bales later we were finished. Sore, blistered fingers, aching backs and all! We baled all through the night, which turned out to be a LOT better as it was HOT during the day in late summer. It was a lot of work and we had a good time doing the work with all the BSing and commradary, but I would not even think about that now. I used to bale hay on my uncle's farm every summer when I was growing up but never that much. Trust me, you will get this hay baling thing out of your system real fast after a few thousand bales! LOL! ;-) ....
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| F350Lawman
Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 411 Goshen, NY
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2003-08-20 62266
I went back today and helped by raking with his Ford/NH 1920 and then I stacked the bales in preparation for someone else loading them on the carts then I had to go. This guy is my feed supplier and always ready to help others out in a jam so I am happy to help him. He gave me an old weight box from the scrap heap that came from a JD 750, I scraped/repainted it and it is now on my 790.
Worked out for both of us, I gave him a hand and now I don't have to buy/make a weight box. Looks much better than what I would have made and is much cheaper. :) ....
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| TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2003-08-21 62293
Sounds like you are having fun. I'd probably be having fun running a baler too at least as long as rain wasn't expected. The rest of haying gets to be just plain work in a hurry. One of the few things my Uncle did let me do when I was a kid is run the side-dump rake (new at the time). I suppose that following the windrows I left gave him something to do. That was fun too. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have let me run the old back-dump rake. My results probably would have looked like some kind of weird Morse code. Plowing, forget it. It'd be a real compliment for anybody to let former city folk (myself included) plow.
Sounds like you're settling into country life. Trading help is the only way things get done around here.
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 | Art White
Join Date: Jan 2000 Posts: 6898 Waterville New York
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2003-08-21 62297
If you fellows feel you have the need I know a bunch of people that would just enjoy you stopping over for a while to help out! Most farmers are very proud of the work they do and they should be! Many would be glad to have you stop by. There are good times to do that and there are times that it might be bothersome but I think they all would enjoy it. ....
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