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Here is another story of my days on the farm. This one never made it into our magazine because it was too long, but this was an important event for me.

Hay Making Music

I grew up on a 250 acre farm in Ohio at a time when 250 acres would barely support a family. My dad gave up his dream of being a farmer and got a job in a foundry when I was 12. It broke both our hearts, but I had some great times while we were still on the farm.

Our dad was often needed in two places at once and depended on my brother or I to stand in for him on those occasions. We were often pushed into doing work way above our age level and we loved it. We loved the trust, and we loved the responsibilities. My brother’s interest was with the animals. I think he wanted to become a veterinarian, or maybe a herdsman. I was interested in the machinery. I was a keen observer of all things mechanical which served me well, but what I really wanted to do was drive something.

And so it was one summer afternoon in 1961. My dad was in a pinch. There was a sick cow in the barn, a storm on the way, field hands were standing around drawing their pay, and there was hay on the ground in the field. Dad sent me to out to run the hay baler, keep the workers busy, and get the hay in the barn while he and my brother met the veterinarian at the cow barn. I was 11 years old.

The baling rig consisted of our John Deere tractor pulling and providing power to our John Deere baler which towed a flatbed wagon behind. The wagon was manned by two high school boys who stacked the bales as they came out of the baler. The tractor and the baler were shiny and almost new, facts of which I was immensely proud.

(There is a link below to a video of a similar outfit for those who are unfamiliar with this old way of baling hay. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video of a shiny new rig complete with wagon and high school boys, but you get the general idea).

The 16 and 17 year old boys on the wagon didn’t like it, but I was their boss. I was fully confident that I could handle the machinery, but I found being the 11 year old boss of two rowdy high school boys stressful and difficult even though they didn’t give me much trouble. I learned at an early age to hate HR work.

We only had about 100 bales left to go, and things were moving along smoothly. It was a sunny Ohio summer afternoon, the boys were doing their job, and I was happily listening to the music of the baler at work. It’s the kind of music only a true gear head can appreciate. The fingers of the pickup made a ticking sound as they whisked the hay up off the ground into the maw of the baler and the plunger made a solid “WHAMP” as it compressed the hay into bales - “WHAMP, tick tick tick, WHAMP tick tick, tick” over and over like clockwork. The tractor layered its two cylinder engine sound on top in time with the music of the baler. The governor opened up for a beat with every “whamp” from the baler – “DUT dut dut dut, DUT dut dut dut.” To a young gearhead it was a symphony under the summer sun.

But the sky was getting darker. The predicted storm was gathering fast and I still had hay on the ground. We dropped a full wagon and as we hooked up an empty one I was doing most of the work. I told the guys to step it up, a storm was coming. They grumbled a little. Today they would have said, “Who the f*&k are you to be telling us this?!” but we didn’t talk that way back then.

We weren’t going to get the hay in at the pace we were going. When I got back on the tractor, I popped it out of 3rd gear into 4th. The hay on the ground was thin enough in most places that the baler would handle the load even at 4th gear speed. When the hay got heavier, I had to pull the clutch to slow the ground speed and let the baler catch up. I knew this was risky. I was running the baler right at the limit of what it could take and the tractor wasn’t real happy either. The plunger was hammering great gobs of hay into the bale chamber with every stroke, "kaWHAMP, kaWHAMP," and the tractor could feel it. The engine’s governor opened a little wider and for a little longer with every plunger stroke – “DAT DAT, dut dut, DAT DAT dut dut.” The louder, more insistent sound of the engine was reverberating off the landscape and, to me, it just made the music sweeter.

The baler has a failsafe to keep it from being overloaded in the form of a shear pin. The inevitable happened. I pulled the clutch a little too late, the plunger hit a too-big slug of hay, and the pin sheared. There were no spare pins in the toolbox. The boys on the wagon thought they were done for the day and were happy to still be on the clock with nothing to do.

But I had watched the mechanic work on the baler when it was new. Some adjustment was out and it was shearing pins. The shear pin was just a ¼ inch bolt about 4 inches long. When it sheared it cut the bolt into a 3 inch piece and a 1 inch piece. The mechanic had run out of shear pins trying to fix the baler and I watched him locate a 3 inch piece on the ground under the baler. He shoved in the hole from the other side, making the connection between the drive wheel and the driven wheel, and allowing the baler to run. It wasn’t bolted in with a nut, but it held.

I told the guys to search around on the ground under the baler for a 3” bolt. They grumbled again but complied. We found the bolt and I installed it the way I had watched the mechanic do it. They guys were enjoying their paid time off and kept saying I was going to ruin my dad’s baler and I’d better not do this. But I told them in my best 11 year old boss voice, “Get back on the wagon, we’re baling hay. “

And we did. We finished the field and got the hay in the barn before the first raindrop fell.

It was probably the proudest day of my 11 year old life.