The art of picking up hay bales

What do you do when you have about 2,000 bales of hay in a field?

We don’t own a bale wagon so we pick up our hay bales by hand.  We have a system of doing that that we thought we’d share…

Meet the driver of the truck.  She goes slow across the field while the bigger kids pick up the hay from the field and put it on the trailer.    We have another child that walks beside the truck letting her know if she is supposed to slow down or stop, depending on how fast we load the hay onto the trailer.  This little driver is already telling us she’s ready for the open road…..

This little guys job is to fetch more water when we unload the hay.  His other jobs are to walk along the truck telling the driver to slow down or stop depending upon how fast we load up the trailer with hay, and to run ahead and roll bales with his sister closer to the truck.  Lot’s to do, lots to do….

When we first start out loading the trailer,  the little kids like to ride on the back while there is still room.  But only for a minute or two.  Then their job is to run ahead and roll bales closer to the truck for our bigger kids and Mom to load.  Dad is up on the trailer stacking while the bigger kids load bales onto the truck.   Again, the younger kids also have the job of walking by the truck and relaying the news from the back of the trailer about whether to slow down or stop while we load bales from the field to the trailer.

It’s important while working with hay that you wear long sleeved clothing and gloves.  Some of our kids don’t like to wear either.  But experience is a wonderful teacher and by about the 5th load when there is hay down your shirt and your hands are burning they start wanting the gloves and the longer shirt.

This guy below has got it figured out!  He even has the chaps on which save your jeans while you are bucking hay.

A load picked up ready to be unloaded and a billion more loads to go. HAH!