Square bales (light rant)

I read alot of posts about small square bales on a few different forums. Most messages involve some anecdote about how much it sucks to handle them or how the square baler made them join the army. Then another post in the same thread will contain something about how kids nowadays just don't want to work. "Can't find any kids that will handle square bales."

Has it occured to anyone that the kids of today have spent years listening to the kids of yesterday complain about square bales? What kid in their right mind is gonna get excited about something that everyone else older than them complains about?

It would be like telling a kid how you jumped off a cliff and broke your spine and then being dumbfounded the kid doesn't want to try jumping too.Yeah you lived through it but 30 years later yer still complaining about the pain on that day.

Thats how most young kids percieve a square baler. So it aint all their fault.

That is a very good point!

So, when they show up for 1 hour of work, not knowing how it sucks, I should blame everyone saying it sucks?

I try to be fare with everyone who bales for me.


I provide drinks and shade and lots of breaks.


I do see how you are thinking. I think that might be part of the problem, but the biggest problem is when they get 30-40 bales in. That's when they decide it really does stink to do that work and sudden health problems pop up.


I have heard everything from menstrual cycle, to partially torn Achilles tendon.

I wish everyone could sugar coat it. I wish everyone could be like my family and say, "if you don't do it now, santa claus will skip over our house."


Do I still do it? yes. I am 34 years old. I am about 60 lbs over weight according to doctors. According to them, I should fall over at any minute.


I am working right now in 92 degrees, 90% humidity. It's like trying to benchpress a Volkswagen beetle 200 times in a sauna. I am going to cut more hay for Thursday. I have 2 guys and a customer who picks up from the field. We are going to pick up 900 bales from the field.

My bales come out of a New Holland 575, and they are full 38 inches long. They are dense, too.

I keep the bale density doors closed as far as they go, before the knotter starts breaking 7200 twine.


It is very very hard work. I do also get your point.


I don't want to be out there raking it in that heat, let alone picking it off the ground and stacking, then stacking in my barn or customers barn.


I guess I never thought about it like that, but I have had to give the speech to many young ones. The speech generally goes like this:

"This is hard work. We wait until the heat of the day is at it's peak so that the hay gets to the proper moisture. It will be ok to be shirtless for the first 10 bales, when your arms will be strong enough to keep it away from you, not to cause major skin rash. After that, you better put your long sleeves on. Once we hit 300, you will be so numb to everything around you, you won't care. You make it to 600 without walking away, and you are beast. Stay with me until 900, get them all stacked, cuss as much as you want, scream until your lungs give out, and you will be rewarded with money and bedtime will feel so good.

You will be tired. You are getting paid for all this, and at 25 cents per bale, after 900, you walk away with $225 after just 7 hours. If anyone gets completely worn out, you can take a break, but you put the added stress on everyone else. when they fail be prepared to step up. We work as a team. Anyone can leave at ay time, but your loose all that pay, aside from what you have done."



That is the speech.


It seems I keep good employees, because I have never had a person walk off.

I do supply support staff. They are family, they take up the slack, and in the end, all the hay gets done.







I do get your point. I get chills thinking about hay. But, at the end of the day, I sleep good, and I feel good. Once I get soaked to the underwear with sweat, and I stop seeing straight, I get a drink and some ice and I keep going. When I am finally done, I am done. everyone laughs and has fun when it is done. We live for that moment.


We do hay every year, and without a kicker or stacking wagon. We do less than 2000 bales a year, but, when we do that, we are good.

If I had more than that to do, I would get a kicker, or a stacking wagon. I would love to be able to justify that. with my low production, I can't justify. It's just for a few horses.




Anyone who does a lot of bulk hay should look into a stacking wagon, or an accumulator system... or at least a kicker. You save so much money versus paying labor for hay stackers. In the grand scheme, it is cheaper to buy the equipment. If you are not paying at least 25 cents for one stack (one stack meaning, you pull from field to wagon, and that is one stack. You pull from wagon to hay mow and that is another stack, or 50 cents per person who works on both ends) then you are not paying enough. you should just reconsider your business plan, when hay is at $5 per first cutting small square.







If you can't get that much in your area, talk to me, and consider paying trucking to get it here. This isn't the 1980's!




Hope you find good people for this year. Really the main group to do the work is the 20-28 year old crowd. They want to work and work out. Younger than that and you can't trust them.

Money is king. Promise a guy who stacks both ends $450 a day, and see how he jumps at the opportunity.





















and yeah, in 1987, I sold squares for 75 cents a bale... those days are gone. don't sell even marginal hay for any less than a bale per current cost of a gallon of gas.

Current cost here is $3.76, and I am selling first cutting for $4. but it is premium.



Good luck.

You made me think a lot more than I wanted, tonight.

Our first baler was a Case hand-tie wire baler that made heavy bales. I never complained about handling those and thought it was pretty easy when we got a twine tie baler that made smaller bales.

We took pride in our work in those day - whatever it was. We survived the depression of the 1930's and just did whatever had to be done.

You make a great point most farmers that complain they can't get anyone to 'work anymore' need to complete the sentence 'for nothing'.Back in the 60's and early 70's we baled alot of square bales on our farm and my best friend and myself hauled hay for other farmers as well but we only worked for the few that paid well and left the others to complain about not being able to get ANY help to haul hay.I don't have a lot sympathy for farmers that can buy 50 thousand$$$ pickups but won't pay help hardly anything to their help and then complain about the quality of their help.Even back then a couple farmers were paying us 30 cents a bale for picking hay up out the field and stacking it in the barn using his equipment and he drove the tractor picking the hay up.He always had plenty of great help.That 30 cents in 1970 would buy then at least as much as $1 will buy today.

Ah, memories of growing up on the farm. Times have changed.
Stacking on the rack sure beats loading loose hay with a fork. Dad had a small operation, 120 acres, so brother & I worked for all the neighbors when our work at home was done.
At first job the baler dropped on the ground. My assignment was to drive pulling rack. Go at steady pace so guy on rack didn't have to worry about getting dumped over. Handling was done by 2 adults. Drive close to bale so guy on ground didn't have to carry too far, but far enough away so he could swing the bale onto rack instead of lifting straight up. They got a rest on trip to barn. Driver switched to driving pull rope for unloading.
The next season everybody started pulling the rack behind baler. AT about age 12 we had 2 on the rack, so not to overwork the youngsters. Couple years of this & then worked with 1 on rack.
Most I handled was 1100 bales in a day.
Pay has changed too. Back then baler owner furnished tractor, baler & driver. Charged 10 cents a bale to drop, 11 cents if pulling rack, farmer furnished twine. Everybody else got a dollar an hour.
Fast forward, retired now. Neighbor asked for help couple weeks ago, got behind with hay on ground & heavy rain. Raked a patch for him, first time pulling a rake since 1957. paid me 15 bucks an hour.
Willie

started helping h hay when I was 5 or 6. was dragging hay back on the wagon at 8 and was stacking hay on the wagon with my older girl cousin at 10. was stacking wagons by myself at 13 on. also mowed a lot of hay away. every morning unloaded 3 wagons from the day before while still cool. Most days baled around 5-600 bales, when weather was right or had enough help then 1000-1200 bales were done. Best baling was in my 20's had a younger girl cousin driving the tractor while I stacked we stayed ahead and was waiting on empty wagons by 3pm. She drove the tractor very smooth exactly the way she was told by her dad. would back the baler up to the wagon to hitch up and always had an eye on me so she could stop if had a broken bale.
did 15-20,000 bales a lot of years. now all grain crops and none of us in shape to bale any more hay.
even spent my the last 5 days of my honeymoon baling hay. sure enjoyed it. some days were brutal, too hot, no wind. most days had some breeze

When my boys were coming up they loved hauling hay because they made money at it, they had a few friends that would work with them and they all had fun, anyone that whined or drug their feet were jeered into working or quitting.

Just did another 600 bales yesterday.

All manual, pick them off the field, pack the wagons just right because of the hills, throw them all up in barn.

Small square bales suck.

And I don't care who hears me say it.

I remember hauling hay for $1 per hour in the mid 60s. Farmer's wife made a big dinner at noon. Daughter in shorts drove the tractor; not too hard on the eyes. It was hot, especially in the top of the mow, dirty and hard work, but I'd do it again. 'course back then McDonalds burgers were 15 cents and fries 12--gas around 25-30 cents a gallon. I think we stacked 125 bales on a wagon. I don't remember how many wagons we did in a day. It was probably an 80-acre farm.

Larry

Back in the 60s and 70s, when everything was put into square bales, we had 70 dairy cows that needed to be fed every day and all of our baling was put into square bales. My family didn't need to hire help because there were three boys in the family, plus my dad. But I had an aunt who lived alone on a farm and she would hire local boys to help with her alfalfa. She would bale them herself, but several neighbor boys, including myself, would stack the bales on a trailer and them throw them on a bale elevator and stack them in her bale shed.
I'm going to say that the problem of finding help today is not because the local boys don't want to work, it's because there just aren't as many family farms around in the area anymore. A few of the local houses where the families have lived are boarded up and deserted. Where there used to be at least 4-5 families per square mile, now we are lucky to have one. Some of the local boys are still hired to cut thistles or shattercane, my youngest boy included.

I never have trouble getting help make couple phone calls and their here I pay them 10 and hour that's not bad money for 16 yr old young men they work hard the boys willing to work are still out there pay them they will come mine are very seldom the same crew I might add u cant workem like slaves

When I was a kid riding the school bus the conversation around square bales was always how high we could stack bales, how tight and square you could load on a wagon and how many bales you could get on a wagon. You would spend the summer hay baling time to improve your bragging rights. I don't think kids that practiced their loading skills ever stopped bragging about the fond memories. At 75 I will be out baling a few small square bales this week and loving every moment while stacking each bale square and tight. I will be alternating the bales in the stack to keep them bound in place even though I will have to use a step ladder to get off and on the wagon. All the time remembering back to the first time I loaded over 100 bales by myself behind a baler in a rolling field. Fond memories never come to people that belly ache about the work they do.

I'm pretty much a one man show. No one is interested in stacking am mowing hay away for what I can afford, which is peanuts in this age. So it's me and my kids and my oldest boy if he makes it here. I don't make real big bales because the kids can't stack them over 3 high, maybe 4, at 10 and 11. When the load piles up they drag the bales away and I get off every 6 or 8 bales and stack. Then climb back on and bale some more. I do all the mowing, they just load bales on the elevator.

I'm 53. I spent the night with a 4 year old sleeping on me since some fool said she could stay overnight. Got about 4 hours sleep. Have several hundred bales to make and mow away today. It's already HOT.

Gonna be a long day....

NO hay this year... but there is a fair bit of wheat straw that needs baled today(supposed to be 92f). My family all has shared fond memories of small square bales with my boys(8+9). They are chomping at the bit to stack hay to toughen themselves up for wrestling.

Will see how it goes this afternoon after the dew burns off.

N/T

Well apparantely I misread. Disregard my other post.

I'm pretty much a one man show too! My dad teds for me sometimes, but I mow, rake, bake and some times Ted. I have a thrower on my baler so I don't have to stack the wagons. Sometimes I unload the wagons myself, but most of the time I can pay a friend to help me stack in the barn with the hay elevator. I love doing hay, I just hate the heat and rainy periods when I can't get out there to get the hay done!

Usually put up 3 to 4 thousand small square bales every year, since my boys have grown up and moved away I pretty much do it alone now, but a few years ago when my youngest son was a senior in high school we had a problem finding any help, not a lot of kids in school here but my sons girlfriend asked if she and her friend could help with the hay and of course I said ok.

They had never done it before but learned quick and were some of the best help I ever had. Not long after they started they decided they would work on there tans when driving the tractors and started wearing bathing suit tops, not long after they started doing that I started having high school age boys hanging out at the hay fields wanting to help. Got so much help that year I had to turn some away, easiest year I ever had putting up hay.

My boys have moved away but the girls still help out when they can and some of the boys still come around to help out every now and then, always pay them as good as I can and when they are working for me my wife always makes sure to have a good lunch for them everyday.

That is a valid point.

Things that pop in my mind are no one has been telling them for years how great sitting in front of a X box is,but yet they all seem to want to do that ?

And the other thing is You all don't know how LUCKY you are to be able to make the choice and be able to do it.
I have allergies and will GLADLY trade them to anyone for the abilty to go near and work in a hay field !!!

All through the 1980s and 1990s we made 30-40 thousand bales every year. My kids and I where the work force. I had/have 12 wagons. I do not use a thrower. I was selling horse hay. The crooked bales would not sell well.

My wife would drive the baler tractor. I would load and stack the wagon. 18 foot wagons. 176 bales on each wagon. Load them in the afternoon heat and then unload early the next morning before it got as hot. I can remember actually dancing a little jig on the wagons behind the baler. It would make my wife laugh her butt off at me acting fool.

I would give all I own to be able to see her laugh like that again.

Still do a few thousand for when you need to pen stuff separate. The Grand Daughters helped make second crop little squares last week for their horses. 2500 bales in three days. Three girls 12, 13, an 15 plus one old fart. LOL. Filled the stable hay mow. The youngest drives the baler while the rest of us stacked.

I started helping with a stationary baler, by poking wires. Don't remember how old I was. I remember it was rather dusty. As time went on one of our neighbors got a new wire, auto tie New Holland baler, run by a Wisconson four cylinder motor. Dad would borrow it for our hay. After the wire was tied a little wire tang was left sticking up at the tie, and you woukd have to be careful handleing the bales, or you would get a nasty scratch. The good old days. Stan

I will admit there are a lot of lazy a$$ kids and adults for that matter. But I guarantee there always have been. The only difference I see is that in the past there were more parents to put a boot in their a$$ to do something. Personally I love doing square bales but then again I'm not your typical kid. I spend about everyday down in the shop working on some tractor or piece of equipment. P.S. I'm 19.

I think it depends on where the kids are coming from, help was not all that easy to find then, going back to the 70's, we did a few thousand, so it was not all that bad, heat, humidity, working in the barns, one was a loft the other a huge hay mow on the left, loft on the right, you drive through the middle, the air did move in that one. I used to stack behind a thrower, or from a chute, to get as much on a wagon as possible. It was popular to compare how may bales each did on their farm, as a kid, that's certainly a scarce conversation, if at all amongst kids today. The farmer I used to help, was able to get some kids for help, going back to '06, and I did help at various times to unload wagons or stack his truck with 200, some loads I was buying anyway, and the one year I put up my own order LOL, cut, ted, rake and baled. I did not mind but when his brother ran the baler, it was like pulling teeth to get him to slow down just a bit to a pace I could stack with, obviously you have to feed the pick up with enough hay and keep pto speed up, but we used to do it and not get hit in the back of the head with bales. Mind you the latter could make you bite your tongue off, really have to be careful when the wagon gets full, was always worth doing not having a lot of wagons like it was when we did our own. At his place you could put 10 wagons under cover, and load them out or stack when you could. I never minded the labor, you just have to push through the heat and dust, where possible place bales and not make more dust plumes, work smart, it does help, take water breaks. I have not done any in awhile, I recall tossing some bales, the lifting and turning, then throwing, I am not totally sure, but I think it is what screwed up my back in late '09, maybe not, hard to say, but that was some pain for a week, was examined, X rayed, no real problems or any since, but one does need to used some care as I could not think of anything else that may have been the cause.

I hired 3 kids last year to haul and fill the loft in the horse barn- took about 4 hours. I paid $10 an hour, each got 40 bucks. One kid asked if I bucked bales when I was their age- Sure, and I got $1.25 an hour, so my check would have been 5 bucks instead of 40. The lad smiled and kind of (politely) intimated that it sucked to be me- so I told him, "But my 5 bucks would buy 10 gallons of gas, with enough left over to take my girlfriend out for a hamburger- how about your 40?"

By the look on his face, it may have been the first time he'd ever thought about inflation.

Nathan SD,

If you lived in the neighborhood, our son would gladly work for you. He"s 18. He has done some baling for our land-renter and another guy.

Kicks his tail. Comes home, cleans up, eats and goes to bed by 7:30. LOL. He does not complain though - he is glad for the work/pay.

Perhaps teens today aren't that stupid. They can look at a field of 50-80 pound square bales in 90 degree heat and figure out for themselves that's one tough job without being told.

One of our neighbors paid 8 cents a bale for us to pick up his small square bales, haul them to the barn and carefully stack them to the rafters back in about 1966 or 1967. We used his equipment and his wife fed us 3 VERY good meals, and the 4 of us got all of his hay in the barn in one day, which really impressed my neighbor. But when it came time to pay the 4 of us, we each got a little less than $20 for more than 12 hours of very hard work. He paid us what we had agreed to, but we were not very pleased at the small reward for our very hard, long day"s work.

The next year, he called to see if I would be interested in hauling hay for him again, and I told him that I believed that he would have to pay us more, since other farmers we had worked for paid about twice what he had. He said he would get back to me, but never did. And I saw that his hay got hauled by someone.

My buddy and I hauled lots of hay while we were in junior high and high school. We kind of enjoyed working hard together and it was a way we could earn some money for school expenses, and gas for our cars when we got old enough to drive. But then both of us got old enough to get jobs that paid better for less strenuous labor, and those jobs didn"t quit after a few days. Over the years I also developed allergies that really bothered me, which also made hay hauling less inviting.

A friend of mine was the longtime football coach at our local high school. He said that back in the 60"s and early 70"s most of his players had worked on farms all Summer and were in terrific shape to play football. But after that time, fewer and fewer potential players had worked hard Summer jobs, and adjustments had to be made in conditioning before the season. The school put in a weight room, which was something never even considered when I was a student. We were tough as nails, just needed to do some running and speed drills and learn the plays!

Back then, almost every little spot that would grow hay in our area was cut and baled. Not anymore. Only a few guys bother to have large animals anymore (and those are usually horses), and fewer still have haymaking equipment. I just brush hogged about 7 or 8 acres of stuff that would have made several hundred small bales of somewhat weedy grass hay, to deal with fire danger and make it look better. It seems a shame to just waste it...but no one else is willing to deal with it, even for FREE!

I would like to have a swather and baler, but I just cannot justify spending the money on them for my 20 acres. And I would be dealing with the baled hay alone, since my kids are all grown and my wife is asthmatic now. I don"t know of any high school kids that would be willing to work for me, and I suppose I would have to pay about $10/hour, or maybe more...so just mowing down the grass and weeds is probably the best solution. Sad!

I guess it"s how you raise them....(bragging), my 11 year old daughter helps us with hay. She drive"s the truck with either a wagon or a 22 ft trailer hooked to it and will also run for bales. We pay her to help. She wanted an allowance....no problem, help with hay and you"ll get one! She"s a great kid.

Stumpy

There are a few things they should have been told that maybe they weren't. Ya know ya might just meet the love of your life working side by side on the wagon with the good lookin neighbor gal! Ya know, there won't be many in high school wrestling that can beat ya! Oh, did I mention that girls kinda like a few muscles that actually show! Did I mention how good it feels to know that I had a part in making sure the neighbor had enough feed for his cattle for the winter and therefore could afford to feed and cloth his daughter (who you may eventually marry) to say nothing of the huge meals provided at supper time. You may even learn to operate a few more pieces of machinery in your life. We lived out so far that without a car we couldn't get a job "in town" if we wanted. Four boys on our farm and Dad rented us out to many neighbors and we got paid good and it was the only spending money we had. Our "allowance" was a house with heat and food and a bed and clothing and presents at Christmas time.Also , Dad didn't have to own a baler/elevator etc or a combine at first because he traded labor and everyone but uncle sam was happier for it. And you are correct in that most of the blame goes on parents who think their kids are too special to have to physical work like they did. I , for one, also believe that even tho we don't have a draft anymore, ALL kids should have to attend and pass 8 weeks of regular basic training at a military base right along with the regular enlisted people. Some of us had no choice, a lot of them needed it. There were 19 yr olds that couldn't run 100 yds!

My three sons grew up helping with hay making, both for our tiny farm and my neighbors. The experience of working with a bunch of hard-working, independent thinking guys was worth far more than any money they got. When a kid can keep up with the older guys he's "arrived", and the self confidence of knowing you an do it is worth more than the money. They're all very successful in their professions and I think a lot of it is due to what they learned on a hay wagon. Just my rant for today.

"The experience of working with a bunch of hard-working, independent
thinking guys was worth far more than any money they got."

We always did small squares at home, no kicker, but baled on
the wagon when we could. I enjoyed it most of the time.
I worked for a guy putting up squares one year, we put 1300 bales
in the barn in one day. He didn't pay for squat either.
But the hardest working guy in that hay mow was "an older fella".
A Korean war vet. He had ulcers and was spitting or throwing up
blood most of the day. He had a family to feed, so he continued.
Not one kid quit that day. Most of us were pretty humbled.
I hope he was paid better than we were. He was our motivation.

First time I baled hay I was the outsider looking in. We had just moved from the burbs in NJ to rural MN. It was hot, dirty work back then and it still is today. My second year in MN I baled for the guy who would become my sisters FIL. Was the only work available for a high school aged boy in the area. Most of the guys wouldn't do it then in 1971/72. Most of the local farmers didn't hire help with hay. They just worked their kids right off the farm. My last year of high school in 72/73 most of the male farm kids I knew had no intention of staying on the farm. Only a handful did. I know kids today who are forced to have a job by their parents and complain about it to no end. That's like stocking shelves in a store or running a register in AC. They seem to think that their parents owe them a smart phone, new car, insurance, gas and play money. Ask them if they want to do any type of farm work and they will cuss you or laugh at you. Too many hours if hired just to operate a tractor and too hard of work for anything else. Part of the problem is the school systems. It started before I went to school. Teachers telling students that they didn't want to be a laborer and convincing them that they wanted to all be doctors, lawyers or the president. I remember teachers chastising students with "if you don't do better you will only be a garbage man". Construction workers, factory workers, plumbers and farmers were all people too dumb to do anything else.


One kid got a job at a convenience store. The complained about the number of hours he had to work. He quit right after school let out and took a job on a farm to keep from his parents making him go to college. Everyone was laughing at him, taking bets on how long he would last. He's doing well, starting to gain the reputation of being a hard worker and loves the job. Go figure!

Rick

(quoted from post at 13:47:16 07/16/13) Perhaps teens today aren't that stupid. They can look at a field of 50-80 pound square bales in 90 degree heat and figure out for themselves that's one tough job without being told.

Click to expand...

It could also be the parents today, most of them, hand the kid money instead of expecting him to earn his own. Even a coyote is smart enough to take the free meal over the one he has to run down.