Helping Al and Al Make Hay

Helping Al and Al Make Hay


Making a living as a small farmer was a tough proposition even in the 1950's.  Al Botcher and his friend Al Thompson, two farms down the valley, both had day jobs but both also had farms and I think they felt like a farm should be farmed.

They were hobby farmers, I guess.  Al Botcher more so than Al Thompson.

My stepfather tried a number of things, some of which were quite exciting.  We had the chickens and I could sneak up on them or chase them around.  The bantam hens were beautiful and some of them became quite tame.  I could pick them up and pet them.  The bantam roosters were even more colorful.

Al fenced off some acreage for pasturing beef cattle.  They had access to the cowyard and the drinking tub.  They were quite large and I kept clear, considering that I had been run over by an entire herd on Grandpa Lee's farm.

One or two summers, Al had pigs in the pigpen.

The two Als had an agreement where they would make and store a whole lot of hay on one farm while they did crop rotation on the other.  In addition, Al Thompson either owned or rented about forty acres in what they called the "bottoms."

The bottoms was along the flat area between Hokah and our valley where the Root River and all the creeks that ran into it had meandered back and forth for probably thousands of years.  It was low lying land that could flood and be too soggy to farm.  But some summers it was excellent for growing alfalfa.

As I grew a bit older and was in 4th or 5th grade, I found that I could be useful to these guys.

Cattle are constantly finding a place to rub up against the fences and posts and eventually knock over something.  They also have the curious notion that the grass is better on the other side of the fence and will stick their heads between the wires of the fence to try and reach what they perceive as the greener grass.  Eventually, on a rotting post, the staples will loosen and the wire falls.

In either case, before you know it, they are out and going to visit the neighbors.  We didn't have horses and little four-wheelers were not invented yet, so when some neighbor called to let Al know his herd was in their vegetable garden, everything had to be dropped and all hands were on deck.

Depending on the logistics of the situation, the cows could either be pushed along the fence and back through the breach or marched up the road like a goofy cattle drive.  There were usually ten or twelve and they liked to stay together, especially when a little stressed.  I was sometimes useful as a blocker.  The two Als would place me in a spot they didn't want the herd to go and all I had to do was look belligerent.

The Als would gently push the herd up the road or along a fence and I would stand beyond the breach so that they would see it as their best move.  Sometimes they would go around me, but if only one or two did, they wanted to be with the rest of them, so they would return.  I was of marginal help.

On one occasion I took it upon myself to clean out the pig shed with the scoop shovel.  It was hard work but I kept at it, thinking that Al would be proud of me when he saw it.  I hadn't really ever had a dad and the new situation was kindling a desire in me to seek his praise.  He was preoccupied, I guess, when he came back and expressed only a mild response.  I needed much more, but made do.

I learned how to operate the power lawn mower, which was a piece of junk, but I could help out that way.

I was too small to handle hay bales; I was just in the way.  They would cut the alfalfa and timothy and let it dry in windrows, turning it a couple of times with a hay rake.  If warm, sunny weather prevailed, they could get the baling done on a weekend or two.  If it rained on the windrows, they had to be turned and dried again and much of the nutrition was lost.  If it rained a lot the hay rotted.  This could happen even after it was baled.  The bales had to lie in the fields out in the sun for a while and dry.

Two things could happen if hay was baled when it was too moist or if it was put in the barn too quickly after baling.  The first was just plain mold.  The moist hay would rot and when you opened a bale, it contained layer after layer of mold and was no good.  The second was the possibility of spontaneous combustion.  Hay baled up too "tough" or moist and stacked in the barn many layers deep had a possibility of fermenting away and bursting into flame, burning down the barn.

All farmers were very cautious about spontaneous combustion.  If there was any possibility because the hay had had to be baled to beat the rain, it was stacked outside somewhere.  If it dried, you were OK.  If it rotted away, the whole stack was considered to be "manure" and was abandoned to rot even more, until it could just be added in with the actual manure and spread on the fields.

One time the two Als had a bunch of hay that they had baled down in the bottoms and a rainstorm was predicted.  My moment of opportunity to act like a man came, since they had only a few hours to get it loaded on haywagons that could be driven into the barn even if it weren't unloaded and stacked.

They took me with them in Al Thompson's truck down to the bottoms, where they had an old Allis-Chalmers tractor and a few hay wagons.  They started the tractor and put me in the driver's seat.  If they set the throttle very low, the tractor would move forward and I wouldn't have to concern myself with adjusting it.

There was a brake pedal, which I could depress to slow it down.  My job was just to guide the tractor and wagon around the field, past the bales, while one Al would throw the bales up onto the wagon and the other Al would stack them.

I got the hang of it and became quite adept at steering the ensemble down the rows.  There were no hills, so my only challenge was not to get headed into some place where I couldn't circle around and go past some more bales.  Once in a while I drove around a circle to line up my next pass.  The two Als seemed not to mind my inefficiency; things were going well.

When the wagon was nearly full, one of them whistled real loud and I put my foot on the brake and the tractor stalled.  That was all right, because they hooked up another wagon and started it again for me.  Off we went.

When I heard the whistle indicating that the second wagon was nearly stacked full, I put my foot on the brake and nothing happened.  The tractor and wagon just kept moving.  I tried again, but no slowing of my tractor and hay wagon.  Both Als were standing in the field quite a ways behind, wondering what was going on.

I drove around in a few circles before they realized that I was unable to stop the tractor.  One of them jumped aboard and shut off the throttle.  Then they inspected the brake and found that it was gone, just a metal housing remaining.  No brake pad.

I was horrified, thinking that I had wrecked the tractor.  Al Thompson surmised that I had been "riding the brake," which I had been.  I had been making constant slowing adjustments by pushing gently on the brake all this time, and I had worn it off.

The two Als did not see this as a big issue and, actually, had a bit of a laugh over it.  They had almost all the hay, and Al Thompson simply drove the tractor on the flat field without needing to brake as they picked up the remaining bales.

Putting new pads on the brakes was apparently not so difficult.