My life as a boy gave me plenty of opportunity to develop feelings about hay.

We hauled tons of hay in summertime, and we fed tons of it in wintertime. I remember times when I would rue the day that I ever first saw a hay field, and then I remember times when it seemed a great blessing to have hay stacked high in the barn.

Such is the life of an Ozarks farm boy. East Arkansas boys had their cotton fields. We boys of the Ozarks had our hay fields. Chopping cotton is hot, tough work.

Putting up hay was hot, tough work, too, especially in the days before tractors, balers, loaders and other machinery.

The first hay mower I remember was a Case horse-drawn mower, yellow and orange in color. It was a beautiful sight in the field, drawn by our two black horses, Dad on the seat in his straw hat, blue overalls and tan long-sleeved work shirt. Most earlier mowers were iron wheeled. Our new mower had rubbertired drive wheels. But operating that beautiful mower still involved lots of physical effort. The levers that lifted the sickle bar were man-powered, requiring real exertion, and even the rubber tires didn’t do much to smooth out the ride or to soften the molded steel seat.

Once the hay was mowed, it had to dry for a day or two. There were no hay conditioners like farmers use today. When the hay had dried enough for storing, we rolled in the dump rake, another rough ride behind the horses. Then came hand work with pitch forks, forming hay piles and opening the way for horses and wagon to pass between piles. Next came loading the hay wagon; more pitch fork work. For us, early on, it was always Dad working on the ground loading hay, lifting forkful after forkful high onto the load. I or my brother Ben would be on top of the hay on the wagon, shaping and tromping (packing) the load.

When a load was full, we made a trip out of the field, wagon wheels crunching through the gravel bed of the creek, and up through the barn lot to the front of the hay barn. There we had a really helpful hay fork which dropped from a rail under the peak of the roof, lifted a mass of hay off the wagon, and carried it back along the rail into the barn.

We would watch as it rolled back to the right spot, then jerk the trip rope, and the several hundred pounds of hay would drop into place with a WHUMP! Almost like scoring in a basketball game!

I’m thinking that haying probably drove many a farm boy from the farm.

Haying has its ornerous aspects. It is hot, sweaty work, scratchy leaves down your shirt, stickers in your socks, salty sweat in your eyes; sweat bees sting, chiggers itch, muscles get weary, and sometimes you’re thinking about the radio programs you would sure like to be listening to at the house. But, then, when you’re done, the barn is full of hay. The work is hard, but when it is done, a certain satisfaction grows on you. Work completed leaves a strangely gratifying feeling. And, there’s quite a good feeling in having a barn full of hay when winter is coming on.

I am fascinated at how essential that barn full of hay was to our life 50 or 60 years ago. With the barn full of hay, we could survive winter and prosper pretty well, most years. Without it, our livestock would have failed, and we would have starved out. I grew to appreciate the story in Genesis in the Bible where Pharoah dreamed about gaunt, skinny cows devouring the fat, sleek cows, the dream from which Joseph predicted famine and hard times coming. Especially in hard, dry years like 1953 and 1954, having hay in the barn was the difference. We were able to keep on keeping on.

Of course, having hay in the barn didn’t mean that work was over. Feeding loose hay is a major chore.

An old-time hay barn is basically a great haystack under roof. In the stack, the layers don’t always lift out easily. Some get sideways and wedged tight, and one has to really dig with the fork to work the hay loose.

Then, it had to be carried to the hay chute and dropped to the lower level, where it was again moved forkful by forkful into hay racks for the cows.

Today, most haying operations are done from the seat of a tractor. Still, I’m sure today’s farmers feel at the end of the day like they have put in a hard day’s labor. Some things carry over through time. Whichever method a farmer uses to put up hay, the scent of curing hay is still strangely appealing; and the massive hay store, whether in an old-time hay barn or in today’s heavy round bales, still supplies a peculiarly reassuring feeling for a livestock farmer, be she or he young or old. Even in the years when the world was dark with war, when our Christmas tree had only a few gifts, when real life was almost as gray as the old black and white photos we made with the Kodak box camera; even then, if the barn was full of hay, we could endure winter and look forward to spring, with an anticipation that “We’ll make it.”◊◊◊

Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.

He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 12/29/2010