The Rural Voice, 1991-09, Page 48NOTEBOOK
Flies, sweat, dust and colourful language
THE WAY IT WAS: REMEMBERING THE YEAR IT TOOK ALL SUMMER
TO PUT IN THE HAY USING THE "BARGAIN" HAY BUNDLE FORK
By R. A. Fowler
My father, a human dynamo then almost 60 years old and
equipped with a short fuse and frame to match, had returned in
1940 to the place and purpose of his youth: a southwestern
Ontario farm.
There he struggled to manipulate the productive impulses
of 140 fertile acres with a herd of Percheron horses, one small,
irreverent son, and a bizarre collection of worn-out machinery
acquired through demure hand signals to auctioneers at local
farm dispersal sales.
These sales provided my father with entertainment, a
choice of company, and a wonderful opportunity to display his
talents as a shrewd trader and purchasing agent par ex-
cellence. In those vocations,
however, he seemed much
taken with low price and
hardly at all with merchandise
condition, technical design,
or anticipated performance.
Of the cheap, labour-
saving devices Pop obtained
in this way, the one that
remains forever burned in my
memory was a so-called "hay
bundle" fork. This little gem,
on which no one — for
reasons only later made clear
— raised our opening bid of
50 cents, was a heavy iron
affair shaped like an inverted
"U" and bristling with
mechanical linkages to
connect a pair of bottom
pivoting teeth to a top, over -
centre lever.
With teeth vertical, the
fork was plunged to its three-
foot depth in new hay. The
top lever was manually
rotated, thus pivoting the
teeth to horizontal. The entire machine, to which was clinging
a 1/2 ton of loose hay, was then hoisted into the barn storage
area.
The hoisting process entailed a long, strong rope which,
lashed to the hay fork at one end and to a team of walking horses
plugged into appropriate harness at the other, elevated the fork
and its payload to the barn roof peak through a series of
directional pulleys. There the whole mass — or "mess" if you
like — would automatically lock onto a traveling carriage for
lateral movement along a steel track fixed permanently to the
roof peak over the hay storage area.
Upon the carriage's arrival at that lofty destination, a firm
tug on a trip rope attached to the lever control pivoted the fork
teeth to vertical, thus sliding the "bundle" of hay off the fork
and into the storage area. The horses were thereupon walked
to their starting point, and the carriage, and its now -empty hay
fork were returned via much back -cracking hauling on the trip
rope to their respective on -the -mark positions to begin another
haul/hoist/travel/dump cycle.
So much for science and engineering. Comes now pain and
anguish.
Imagine, it's haying time 50 years ago: a humid, oven -hot
July afternoon. Horseflies, black flies, house flies, cluster
flies, deer flies — every kind and size of fly known to and
cursed by mankind, all with voracious appetite, excellent skin -
piercing equipment and inexhaustible energy. And dust!
Clouds of dust swirling out of
the new -mown hay, exploding
from the parched, now -naked
ground, billowing off the
straining horses. And sweat! —
animal and human — always
and everywhere. A perfect
cement to weld layers of flies,
dust, and all manner of air -
suspended vegetation to every
square inch of the human body.
And yonder comes a flat rack
wagon —16 feet long, eight feet
wide, and piled high with new
hay — swaying ponderously
behind a pair of snorting black
horses. Atop this rolling
mountain of hay are two figures,
one small and the other smaller,
whose shimmering resemblance
to a middle-aged man and his
pre -puberty son is half hidden in
a floating curtain of flies, dust,
and stray vegetation.
You should know that years
later, when time and eroded
memory terminals had dulled
the agony of what is to follow, it was deduced that our 50 cent
hay fork had at some previous time survived a barn fire. That
ancient disaster, in draining most of the strength and all of the
reliability from the control linkages of our auction sale
"bargain," had reduced the functional integrity of the whole
machine to the agricultural equivalent of Russian roulette.
Meanwhile, the stage is set. The actors — would "victims"
be a better word? — ready. The drama begins.
The loaded wagon is centred on the barn floor beneath the
roof peak track, the horses disconnected, led outside, and
attached to the hoist rope. My father plunges the hay fork deep
into the load, sets the control lever, signals me to drive the
44 THE RURAL VOICE