Making Hay: My Summers as a Hay Baler
Trusty Farmall A was a true partner during my summers making hay.
July/August 2009
Brenda Brinkley
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While other girls went to the pool, worked on their tans and got manicures, I tried not to burn in the hay field.
Illustration by Michele Tremaine
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At age 13, my first vehicle was a rusty red tractor. While other girls polished their nails and worked on their tans, I spent my summers in the hayfield on my little A Farmall.
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The oldest of four, it didn’t matter to Dad that I was a girl. He needed help, and I was it. Nobody cared that my housekeeping skills remained neglected and undeveloped, and neither did I. Housework meant being indoors, and, for me, that was like putting a snowball in the oven.
On my tractor I was in a world all my own. People muse about NASCAR drivers being able to drive in circles for hours in the heat. The only things NASCAR has on farmers are the paycheck and a pit crew. What farmer wouldn’t love a pit crew?
I spent endless hours in the field. Most of my time was spent raking hay. Dad did the baling, and Grandpa could be seen puttering around the meadow on his H Farmall. Some days he helped. Some days he didn’t. I guess at his age, he had earned the right to drive out of the field whenever he chose. I didn’t have that option, so I always went prepared.
Sissies wore shoes, although I always kept my emergency sneakers tied together by the laces and wrapped around the tractor’s gearshift lever. You never knew when you might have to tromp through a thistle patch.
My little tractor provided no protection from the sun, and we made hay while the sun shone. I wore shorts in the field, but kept a pair of jeans on the tractor.
The work day didn’t end when the baling was done. Dad had no qualms about putting me in the barn loft to stack bales. Handling hay and wearing shorts go together like dill pickles and banana cream pie. After trying to stack hay in shorts one time, I never forgot my jeans again.
Dad also did custom baling for other people, so I put many miles on my tractor. To say it was in tip-top shape would be a baldfaced lie. But when you spend that much time together, you learn all the little, and not so little, idiosyncrasies of the machine.