Heavy Lifting

[poliphilo]

There's only so much heavy lifting I can do in a day. I've never had much stamina. Once- in my twenties- I tried to keep pace with a couple of young dudes on a Kentucky farm who were heaving great enormous hay bales onto a wagon in the torpid heat of a summer's day and it all but killed me.  I struggled through to lunch, then slunk away shamefacedly and did something ladylike instead. 

This morning I finished clearing out the kitchen cupboards. Then we took a load to the storage unit and I filled the last of the floor space there. After lunch we went up to Sainsbury's and I deposited six bags of books and videos in the Oxfam bin and bought some strong carrier bags. I've discovered I prefer bags to boxes when in comes to packing books; they're so much easier to carry.

Since then I've been sitting around, doing a crossword, dozing- and getting up once in a while to potter.

Comments

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Somehow the idea of you doing something ladylike makes me smile.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe that was the year I was painting a mural in the meeting room of the episcopal church. I may have escaped to that.

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Well that's hardly ladylike, because I'm assuming you employed big, manly strokes. ;)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. I'm not a very good painter so my strokes were tentative and finicky.

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Look, I'm giving you every opportunity here to come off as manly and brutish. Work with me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK. It wan't finicky at all. I threw pots of paint about- just like Pollock- then went out and drank a quart of whisky in a low bar and had a fist fight.

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat's better... ;)

[oakmouse]

Chucking around hay bales looks like easy work but it's really not. You have to know how to get the momentum going and how to lift them properly. Also, do you have any idea how much a bale of hay weighs? Those young Kentucky dudes had probably grown up throwing around hundred pound feed sacks and other hefty things to work up to hay bales.

Glad the clearout is proceeding apace. It's a lot of work!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hay bales are also prickly. You end up with puncture marks all over your hands and forearms.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Prickly, yes.

The worst of it, I think, is not picking them up in the field and heaving them onto the hay wagon; the worst is stacking bales in the loft, as they are thrown threw the mow. The heat is so oppressive up there, and the air so close, that one is tempted take off one's shirt and, when one does, little bits of dried grass stick to your sweaty skin and make tiny, stinging cuts.

Putting up hay is not much fun that way at all. My father has used either a stacker or round baler for twenty years, now, and it is not nearly so labor-intensive. Cutting and baling are okay. My favorite is tetting and raking hay. The repetitive motion, the smell of the drying grass, the sunshine, the whir of the equipment: I find it all delightfully hypnotic and peaceful.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I never got as far as the hay loft.

I'm not a country boy....

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I am a country boy, sort of. Most every weekend of my childhood was spent on my grandparent's farms, about an hour away. I do not give it much thought, except when topics like this come up or, as happened recently, I was called upon to operate a tractor or repair a fence or hang a gate.

[oakmouse]

*nods* And with a long-term wheeze from breathing all of the bits.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Actually, it depends upon the hay baler and how it is set. I have seen bales weigh anything from around 40 pounds to upwards of 80, and of course the nature of the hay itself could factor in as well. If memory serves, in Western states hay bales can be even larger than they are here on the East coast.

[oakmouse]

Yes, it does depend on the baler. I've never seen one that goes as low as 40 lbs, but then I'm from the dryland west (Eastern Washington) and most balers there seem to run to the >100 lb range. My own limited experience has been with balers that run around 100-125 lbs, but asthma disqualified me from working at haying years ago and my knowledge of more recent balers derives entirely from conversations with fellow Grange members --- mostly either cattle farmers or hay growers.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I was thinking that bales ran much larger, out west. Here in Virginia, I have never seen a square bale weighing more than around 80 or so. Most is stored in lofts, so perhaps that is the reason: ease of handling.

[oakmouse]

*nods* Makes sense. Out west for about the last twenty years or so most larger farms seem to have switched over entirely to the balers that make big round rolls and wrap the finished bale in white plastic. On the larger farms the round bales are picked up and handled mostly by machinery, or by two or three hands working together. I haven't handled them myself but from the road they look quite big and very heavy. I don't know if they're usually stored in lofts or not, though. Some farmers seem to leave them on the ground until needed, but then the dryland West doesn't get enough autumn or winter rain for hay like that to spoil sitting out so long as it's wrapped.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

My father has gone to a round baler, which vary considerably in the size of bale they produce. The one he has makes bales of around 800 pounds. I don't know that they run much larger than that, but am quite certain I have seen bales lighter. If practices around here are any indication, the bales are most often skewered on a big spike, mounted on the tractor's hyrdraulic lift system, and moved around that way.

There is surprisingly little rot and waste, even when the round bales are left uncovered. The curved top sheds water nicely, despite the wet winters here in Virginia, but the bottoms do soke up moisture and thus the move to plastic covers.