How can I blame...

[GKman]

When I was a kid, putting up hay built up muscles, earned a few bucks, provided a lot of bragging rights and status. Hard not to swagger into the pool room after a long day putting up the heaviest, worst-tied, dirtiest bales anybody ever made.

I had 6 acres of alfalfa done. Mowed, crimped and win-rowed in one swath with a 16' wide Heston hay machine, rolled into 1600 lb bales, hauled home on a spike on the back of a tractor. All by a guy about 75 years old with one lung and one kidney!

My question - HOW CAN I BLAME THE CHINESE OR MEXICANS for taking all those great jobs away.

[Weston Bye]

Yep. I did the manual hay thing when I was a kid, but never got the buff muscular benefit.

For the past 30 years or so I have been involved in the automation business. Early on, much of the machinery was stand-alone stations and fixtures to aid an operator in doing a job. As time went on, more operations were combined and the operator was relegated to loading and unloading the machine.

I recall one engineer from one of the automakers remarking "I can get that job done cheaper with five mexicans and a drill press" after seeing a complex piece of automation. Turns out that it wasn't so, but that's what it takes now to compete in the market - elimination of labor or going to a cheaper labor source.

I am in favor of employing people. It is people that purchase the products that I build. I am also in favor of staying in business, and nowadays it's a matter of minimizing costs in order to eke out any kind of profit.

Profit? Some businesses are currently satisfied with mere survival.

[Mcgyver]

haying didn't build big muscles, it built endurance and a kind of toughness in us kids....you just had to keep going. Occasionally the odd body builder type would show, part time work thing, not a question who would win a bench press competition, but they didn't last long. It was miserable, hot work done in long sleeves and pants or you're scratched to hell and quiting wasn't an option....amazing it took as long as it did for someone to invent the big bales

6 acres isn't much, or are you talking binding and carrying the bales to the barn manually?

take the jobs? we gave them away. Priced ourselves out of our own market while demanding cupboards full of cheap crap.....their cheap labour is something we wanted and got to subsidized our lifestyle. Not that its the script i would have chosen, but its what happened.

No offense taken to locking this one as well George, you deserve a weekend too and it'll be a fast downward spiral

[GKman]

.
No offense taken to locking this one as well George, you deserve a weekend too and it'll be a fast downward spiral

Sounds fair. I'm the same jerk that started the thread about the AK 47. I'd shoot anybody I thought was involved in bear baiting or dog fighting but baiting the clowns that hang around here is just iresistable.

[Cobbler]

When I was still in my parents house, we put up 10,000+ small square bales each year of road ditch hay for ourselves and another 6,000 or so bales of alfalfa for the neighbors. Our own hay was for 30+ head of horses and mules and all the mowing and raking was done under horse or mule power. I'm pretty sure everything was uphill too . That was a bunch of labor hours. It would be interesting to knock down all the input expenses from back then at those techniques and compare it the same way to today and large round bales.

That was just 25 years ago... now the small square bales are very rare. I guess it is mostly changing demographics. Smaller families, less agrarian society, technology advances in farm machinery. I would guess that if you did the dollar value conversion that it is cheaper per # of hay today than back then.

[rkepler]

That was just 25 years ago... now the small square bales are very rare. I guess it is mostly changing demographics.

Around here the old bales still appear on smaller fields - I've been putting up alfalfa from 3 acres for a few years and while I can get a small baler in I could never get one of the big-ass rollers in (heck, 2-3 passes across my little acres and he'd be done anyway, too much time in travel). I just disked in the old alfalfa, leveled and put in pasture grass so next year I'll be haying the fields.

[Bob Farr]

haying didn't build big muscles, it built endurance and a kind of toughness in us kids ***

I didn't grow up on a farm, but I sure baled a lot of hay. I had to work on the hay wagon before I was allowed to take the farmer's daughter out on a date. It didn't build any muscles for me either, but I've been married to that girl for 20+ years now.

She can still handle square bales better than me!

Bob

[SGW]

My grandfather was a loose hay man -- no bales. Pitching loose hay onto a hayrack by the forkful is a lot of work!

[winchman]

I didn't get involved in baling the hay, but I sure tossed a bunch of bales from the wagon into the barn loft. That was pretty easy after getting in shape by carrying watermelons to the truck.

[RussZHC]

I remember the eye infection after swirling wind in one corner of the quarter had me wearing a patch for a weak (I also remember walking into doors on that side which people thought was being helpful, maybe open it far enough so someone could get through ) and that the board of the cart for stacking the "pyramid" was really, really, slippery...