Y’know…. When I was a kid doing that… I always got the wet ones. Loaded with green alfalfa… and you could pull your arms from their sockets on those 90 lb. sonsabitches. Oh… and ya think you can do that in a tank top…? Well sure, ya can… for awhile. But you’ll get tired of your arms looking like you’d stuck them in a blender.
The tailors always have to do a double check on me when they are fitting me out. I have very long arms, and short legs like the lower order primates. Bales are the probly the reason why. Hardly anyone does little square bales anymore, and I am more than happy to see them go.
Two bales was always a no go.
ReplyDeleteI worked the rack mostly and heaving those bad boys over you head was hard work.
Still, cute chick.
We were throwing alfalfa one summer. It had been a long hot day... I was throwing and I picked up a bale and a snake flipped over on my chest. I threw it over the trailer without any effort at all, yelling "SNAKE!!!" We didn't have poisonous snakes up in Lubbock County, but it was as big as my arm. My buddy ducked as it went by his head. Whew.... It was baled into the bale. Only a loop about 4 feet long was hanging out. Same field, there was a really wet green bale on the edge, and the wires came up but the bale stayed on the ground. That sucker was heavy....
ReplyDeleteYeah, even with those heavy cloth backed leather gloves with short gauntlets, my wrists looked like I despaired of life. They were gnawed up for a week or more after we were done. And my finger joints were chewed up as well. She's just posing and feeding a single show calf. They call em club calves down here. 4H or FFA show calf. Her pants aren't even dirty or wore out across the thighs. No sunburn or dirt on her either.
Oh man, throwing bales was a great time !!! Of course it was 40 years ago and I was young, healthy and stupid to the world.
ReplyDeleteI loved working for Farmer Dave because his hot "Farmer's Daughter" drove the tractor when I baled !!
https://bacontime.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/rule-five-the-farmers-daughter/
Good times !!!!
I learned real fast to wear long sleeve shirts when helping out on a friend's farm throwing bales as a kid.
ReplyDeleteI understand the arm problem Glenn, I delivered drywall for a living in the sixties.
ReplyDeleteOn Pop's old baler you could adjust the tension on the bales. You could set it up so that it made the bales heavy or light. And Pop, gawd rot his eyes - he set his up so that they always weighed in around 50 lbs. minimum. He claimed that made the stacks more solid and secure and he was probably right... but he never had to stack or fondle them as I did. I am STILL mad about it!
ReplyDeleteMy uncle figured about 40 lbs per bale was right, but he realized he had kids (my brother and I and my cousins) doing the loading. No hot girl driving the truck, though. My 5 year old cousin got that job.
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