Hand Tools and Machinery for Country Living

[Too Tall]

WRT the mult-flora...when I arrived at the camp there was an 8' wall along most of the eastern exposure trails. No kidding it was 8 feet deep and hundreds of feet long. I started with a gas powered Stihl pole saw than moved on to spray. It's taken three years to get them down to ground level. This year, I'm able to zap poision ivy that warmed the multi-flora's feet as well :) Oh, there are posion ivy vines as thick as my leg that I dispatch with a hand saw and eye protection. It ain't pretty.

The optimistic goal is to get rid of the invasive tree species leaving one good native every 30' feet and ground surface that I can maintain with a DR brush hog....I'm soooo close to that goal.

I'm no arborist but I love to play one on TV. Last yr. I planted a genetic survivor American Elm that is aloready 8' tall. Also, a zone 7 hardy Granddflora. The elm will someday be the largest tree on all 90+ acres and the Magnolia should top out at 50'. We have mature Chinese Chestnuts which produce countless pounds of nuts. The deer love it and some of my pals actually make flour from that. I could go on, I'm following in the footsteps as they say.

By this time next year I'll be looking at pretty manageable slopes for the first time in many many years before my arrival.

#d#mnstraight

[jclay]

Not just for "country living", this changed my world: https://us.solo.global/product/teles...ay-tube-48-92/

[bigbill]

My tools today were my hands and back.

[TonyP]

My tools today were my hands and back.

My back hurts just looking at this picture.

[Mabouya]

My back hurts just looking at this picture.

Meh - those bales don't weigh an ounce over 10 lbs. ; )

[Tom]

Give yourself a little room, grip both loops of twine with one hand and with a swing, a push from your free hand and a little practice you can throw the bales practically so they stack themselves. Haying season was one of summer's highlights when I was a pup.

[ides1056]

I always use hooks when hauling hay.

[72gmc]

Give yourself a little room, grip both loops of twine with one hand and with a swing, a push from your free hand and a little practice you can throw the bales practically so they stack themselves. Haying season was one of summer's highlights when I was a pup.

Same for me but I never thought of handling bales as the highlight. Riding on (and jumping off) the tractor all day, riding down the road on a stack of bales in the back of a farm truck … which makes me shudder now to think of the danger … being sweaty and dirty and appreciated for hard work by a bunch of joke cracking local guys I looked up to, including my dad, those were my highlights. Getting up the day after it was done and knowing I could ride my motorcycle again.

[bigbill]

No one tell OSHA, but as a kid, I'd load hay in the fields, sometimes with a cousin, sometimes alone, with a low flatbed trailer behind a 40s vintage Farmall Model B. I would put the tractor in first gear, idle the engine, bungie the steering wheel, and jump off to pick up bales as it putted across the field. At the end of rows, I'd jump on to turn around, then stop to stack bales before proceeding. I was doing this age 10-18. Considering the equipment my grandfather had, the newest of which was from the 60s, I feel lucky to have made it to adulthood with all my limbs.

[Tom]

The first hay truck my dad had was a Chevy flatbed from some time in the late 40s. Bad clutch, sketchy brakes and the youngest and smallest sibling driving it. Vermont fields, often on a steep angle to the woods. There were a couple of times my sisters aged 12 or 13 would perform impressive feats of driving, turning the truck off the downhill when it didn't much feel like stopping before the woods without dumping the load of bales and whatever older sib was up there stacking. That truck was gone before I came along so I never had that thrill.

My earliest musical training was baling hay. The baler had a two cylinder air cooled Wisconsin 35 horse engine with no muffler. That set the key. The plunger set the bottom of the rhythm ramming the hay into the chamber to pack the bales, the pickup reel going tick-tick-tick when the bent teeth came around, the dogs were the tom-toms on the alternate beat from the plunger and they had a great sound on the drawback when they caused all the loose sheet metal guards to pop and rattle. The knotter would do a neat end of measure ka-doop-cha-pop.
The whole thing would slow and shift down tones when it got loaded, the tractor would resolve to the tonic when you turned up the hill and its engine would load. After three or four hours of that in the hot sun you were just about hypnotized.

[72gmc]

First gear on farm tractors is made for slow motion autopilot as you work alongside it, as far as I'm concerned. A clear risk of being maimed and higher productivity in equal measures. For some reason that never bothered me as much as the truck rides on wobbly stacks of hay, which spooked me enough that I would grab at a wooden bed rail if I could.

Now I look at my dad's little Deere with all of the stickers showing arms twisted like noodles around PTO shafts, etc. I wonder how many people stood under loaded buckets before someone decided that wasn't a good idea.