Bob Comis operates Stony Brook Farm in Schoharie New York where he and his wife pasture raise heritage breed pigs, lamb, goat and poultry. In his posts, Bob shares his thoughts on farming, regional food systems, and how it all could be better and different.

Peter and I went over to one of my co-worker’s yesterday to help them with hay. It was the first hay of the season for me and the first hay ever for Peter. At my co-worker’s place they use a baler with a chute that drops the bales onto a wagon being towed behind the baler. Then the people or person on the wagon stacks the bales on the wagon while the tractor moves around the field picking up the grass and baling it.

For the first field, Peter, my co-worker’s brother, and I all rode on the wagon stacking the hay so that we could learn how they do it on their farm (every farm has a slightly different way of doing things). Then after that Peter and my co-worker’s brother went down to the hay barn with the full wagon and started putting the hay up in the loft while I stayed behind with the tractor and baler to stack the bales on the wagons.

It has been a couple of years since I rode on a wagon stacking hay, so at first I was a bit wobbly, but once I got my “wagon legs” I could ride on the wagon and just concentrate on carrying and stacking the bales without also needing to concentrate at the same time on keeping my balance so that I didn’t fall off the wagon and twist my ankle or get run over.

After five hours of stacking hay, I was pretty whooped. The last row we picked up was along the edge of some woods, and it was a bit wet, so the bales weighed about 80 lbs. (that field ended up being bedding hay because it got rained on a few times). In addition to that the wagon was basically totally full. I had about two square feet of space to stand on. A few times I came really close to falling off the wagon while I picked up the bale and tried to lift and twist so that I could raise the bale up high enough to throw it onto the stack behind me without actually turning my body around because I didn’t have enough room to do it. In the end, however, I didn’t fall off, and we were able to pick up all of the bales without needing to drop any on the ground and go back and pick them up later.

When Peter and I met up back at the barn after we were finished, we heaved ourselves up into the truck and drove home more or less silently as we sat there cooling off from the breeze, covered up to our elbows in hay chaff and grime.

As soon as we got home, we went inside to wash up, but then we had to head straight back out to do the evening feed.

I was in bed and asleep by 8:30pm.