Don't kids haul hay anymore?

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randywa

randywa

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Republic, Mo.
I've given up trying to find help putting up hay this year. Our last cutting was going to be around 2000 bales. I got to the point of offering $.20 per bale, each, using my truck, trailer, loaders, and elevators. That's $200.00 each and no takers. Girlfriends and softball were the most common reasons. It took 2 days, but the wife and I and a son-in-law (who I may never hear from again) got it done.
 
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Randy,
I know your pain, I was raised on a dairy farm, we milked an average of 100 cows a day. We had to put up our own feed, including lots of hay and grain. I put many a bale of hay in a barn loft for.02 cents a bale during my high school days. It was hay hauling that bought me my first car and my classring. My first car cost me 100.00 and my classring ( which I still wear today) cost me 123.00. I later was contracted to haul hay for a neighbor. When he asked me about hauling in his hay, I gladly said yes and he went to bailing it up. I went to hire some help, and only got 2 young men to help. The next day neighbor calls up and said that he had 2000 bales on the ground and that was only half of it. We ended up hauling 4000 bales of hay for him, and he paid me .25 cents a bale and I split it equally with the 2 young men. They really enjoyed the payday. But sadly today, kids wont work like we had to do.
 
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If i may -- I've hauled hay before and would gladly do it for .20 a bale! It's hard work but that makes money. I gotta rep for my gen somehow!
 
WHAT Your supposed to get paid to bale and stack hay. We did over 5000 bales a year not including straw and my Dad never paid us kids a dime. Hot summers, hard work, and some of the best times of my life. My brother was the elevator and I was the stacker And people wonder why country boys are tough.
 
Hay is work but at least you weren't bored. I weeded bean fields when we went back to Illinois. Work is a foreign concept or bad word to many young people. Oh they want the big bucks but don't want to work for it.
 
Been there and done that. Started when 12 on a relitives family farm to just help out but seemed to get a call for help all the time.

Then I met my wife at about age 16 when we were dating and guess what her father had a farm and all he did was bail hay and sell it to the Phila. race track. Even when she went off to college he called me for help. Never really got paid and did'nt care but the big pay off was when we got married he gave us a huge down payment on a house. And now at age 50 it was only a few years ago when we moved to Texas the hay bailing stopped. Can't imagine how many hay bails I moved over all those years.
It's dirty,hot, sweaty hard work.

Keith "mrburls"
 
Displaced Canadian said:
WHAT Your supposed to get paid to bale and stack hay. We did over 5000 bales a year not including straw and my Dad never paid us kids a dime. Hot summers, hard work, and some of the best times of my life. My brother was the elevator and I was the stacker And people wonder why country boys are tough.
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I worked on that same farm growing up. Heck there wasn't even an option on being paid. Only days we had off were Sundays.
 
I understand the issue at hand. Last year I could not find anyone to my partner and I. With that said this year I sold all my hay equipment and don't regret it. The other added reason was people would try to talk you out of the $3.50 per bale! I told them then go to the feed store and pay $5.50-$6.50 a bale. So, I'm now just managing my berry farm and working bee's.
 
randywa said:
I've given up trying to find help putting up hay this year. Our last cutting was going to be around 2000 bales. I got to the point of offering $.20 per bale, each, using my truck, trailer, loaders, and elevators. That's $200.00 each and no takers. Girlfriends and softball were the most common reasons. It took 2 days, but the wife and I and a son-in-law (who I may never hear from again) got it done.
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We have an 2 intersection standers here in Gettysburg that would have laughed at this figure. They make more beging in 5-8 hrs and brag about
it when they to to stores for something - eats,smokes,beer, and drugs. These 2 always bring out a wad of cash in the several hundreds, and park blocks from their standing spot with a decent vehicle to remain unseen.

I use to help my grandfather do his fields in the early 60s and enjoyed it. Helped made us who we are today.
 
The first time I can remember helping haul the hay, I think I was around 7 or 8. Dad had an old McCormick baler that had a manual release, and made the small round bales, about 18" dia. and about 3' long. Dad and my uncle stacked them on a '49 Chevy pickup while I steered. The truck stalled on a hill, and before I could get it going again, I had thrown most of a load back down the hill. I thought my sister was going to be an only child.
 
I use to help my neighbor all time on his farm. I have no clue how many bails we would toss around, but I got $50 a day and was happy with that. What totally sucked was how itchy and cut up I was at the end of the end. But I would do it again in a heartbeat.
 
Never did much hay myself... once up in Kansas for about a month just before I joined the navy I helped out when my step father broke his arm... he was hired as a farm hand on a big wheat farm and was in a car accident on the way to the job.... as a kid, my dad was a cotton farmer, so I got to haul a cotton sack up and down the rows a few times... wasn't quite big enough to pull a 6 yard sack and fortunately the folks separated and I got to leave the farm in my early teens.... I found city jobs after that.
 
Last time I put up hay was about 8 years ago in OK. We were visiting friends who raise Belgian Drafts and they were putting up hay. Ramona and I got the job of stacking it in the loft because the roof was too low for the guys to stand up (too low for us, too, so we wore our riding helmets!) We got the job done...not bad for a bunch of 60+ old duffers!
 
Hmmmm

We only put up about 1200 bales a year but then we were just "fun" farmers and I worked about 50 hours a week (my average work week for about 25 of the 32 years on that job) at IBM. We had 6 kids, most of them pretty small at the time, and they all helped. We believed that work built character.

They all turned out to be "keepers" so I guess we were right about that.
 
I'd come do it for you...

My hardest job was when I was a grunt for a roofing company. I spent a summer hauling piles of roofing tile up a ladder. All summer. 100+ pound stacks of tile. Skinny little 16 year old kid. In So Cal. In summer. For minimum wage.

It actually wasn't that bad. Hard work, but it felt good too, ya know?

Then the owner of the company turned out to have a thing for little boys. One ruptured testicle (on him, not me) and I no longer was hauling tile up ladders. :eek:
 
Used to go work for an uncle when I was young, driving tractor and moving hay at 10 or so this was fun. Never got paid for the hard stuff but he did pay us a nickel for every mouse we killed. Had to save the tails for proof. Between my brother and I, I think we made a couple dollars that week. He didn't think we would do it, a couple city boys but we wern't sqeamish at all. A few years later we moved to the outskirts of a small town and I went to work for the farmer across the road from us. Spent the summer doing all the jobs you can't get kids to do today for a dollar a day. I think I would have killed for .20 a bale.
 
Don't know that I would put all the blame on the kids today, as we are one of the most permissive societies in the world, and that's the fault of the parents and grandparents.:wink:
 
I'd love to know the age spread on the people who responded to this thread, just for kicks. I put up square bales every summer from the time I was tall enough to sit on a sack of creep feed in the truck and see over the dash, till I enlisted in the USAF. That old 63 chevy truck would idle up and down any hill on my grandparents farm, and my uncle would stand on the front bumper and adjust the carb to set the speed. My instructions were pretty clear, "if you hear somebody hollering, turn it hard right and circle till somebody that can reach the brake pedal catches up with you". Once I got big enough to toss a bale 10 feet high, my uncle would buy me a brand new pair of Wells Lamont "white mules" at the start of every season. As far as I know, that and several weeks of the best food in the world was all the payment I ever got (or expected). First cold beer I ever drank got pulled up out of the well in a wooden bucket and handed to me after a day of stacking bales the summer after I turned 16. Lone star, in a steel can with a removable pull tab.

Couple of years after I left, they bought a round baler and the whole family slowly stopped getting together every summer after that. After my last Great Uncle died I spent a few months racking my brain trying to figure out how to take the place over, but by then it was pretty much impossible to earn a living on a family cattle farm in Texas, unless you were independently wealthy or already retired. Ended up selling the place to a Pilot with American Airlines as a hobby farm. One of the few times I ever saw my dad cry.
 
Old enough

Well I'm old enough that when I was a kid the only hay making I ever did was not with a baler....pitched it on to a wagon drawn by a team consisting of one horse and one jackass. Pitched it off in the barn a big fork lowered from the peak of the roof was used to pick it up and deposit it then it was spread by hand. We kids pitched in and did it because we thought it was fun, usually got paid a couple of cookies and a glass of milk by the farm wife. That was during and just after WWII when most of the men were off to war and people relied on teenagers and even younger kids for a lot of things.
 
nativewooder said:
Don't know that I would put all the blame on the kids today, as we are one of the most permissive societies in the world, and that's the fault of the parents and grandparents.:wink:
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Here here!

A few days ago I was in the local Pizza Hut waiting on a take out order when I noticed a copule kids playing arcade games over in the corner. They ran out of money and went back to their table for more. I didn't hear the conversation but good ole mom pulled out a $10 bill and handed it to them so they could continue.

These were not little kids either, I'm guessing they were 14 or 15 and it sure looked like a "normal" transaction to me as if they do it all the time.

Yep, why work when you have your own personal ATM machine at your disposal!

I was never around hay country but spent many a day schlepping around a beat up ole mower, a tank of gas, rake and a pair of grass clippers all over the neighborhood in hopes of finding a lawn to mow hoping to make $.75 or $1 for the front and back.

You never see that anymore either, the kids are too busy texting their friends on their $200 cell phones!
 
Smitty37 said:
Well I'm old enough that when I was a kid the only hay making I ever did was not with a baler....pitched it on to a wagon drawn by a team consisting of one horse and one jackass. Pitched it off in the barn a big fork lowered from the peak of the roof was used to pick it up and deposit it then it was spread by hand. We kids pitched in and did it because we thought it was fun, usually got paid a couple of cookies and a glass of milk by the farm wife. That was during and just after WWII when most of the men were off to war and people relied on teenagers and even younger kids for a lot of things.
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Oh, my yes! And there was a rope hung from the rafters where you could swing out and land in the piled hay! (but don't fall down through the holes over the mangers.) The horses knew just what to do, and would give you the fishy eye if you didn't keep up and they had to stop and wait on you LOL.
 
jskeen said:
I'd love to know the age spread on the people who responded to this thread, just for kicks. I put up square bales every summer from the time I was tall enough to sit on a sack of creep feed in the truck and see over the dash .
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Well, I'm 68, and I know what "creep feed" is!
 
One day my girlfriend and I were watching the high school boys bucking bales (picking them up off the ground and tossing them on to a wagon). The baler had killed a bullsnake, and I found it. The devil made me do it....I tossed it up on the middle of the wagon and those boys scattered like chickens. Glad I can run fast :biggrin:.
 
My Friend John Leased his land to some folks from outside who wanted desperately to live the farm life. His two boys hadn't done hay before so I and John's regular hand went by to show them the ropes. Jacob and I put aside our own work to help out and none of us got paid............btw I was also older than the rest of the crews total age!


Them city boys dropped about 30 pounds last summer and there folks say they have more confidance than ever.
 

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Damn, how many people is it that get $200 ea? Regardless of that..I'd have got on a line, heck I'd even be the guy up in the top of the mow if need be for that money. When I was a kid my grandpa only paid me $6 an hr. We'd move a heck of a lot more bales than that in a day, with time left to grab a pitch fork and shovel the nasty pigs.
 
I picked cotton in La with my cousins while I was in the 2nd grade. I also hoed orange trees out in the orange groves in Fl for a .05 a tree....all you needed was a good hoe (I had one) and a file to keep it sharp plus the ability to keep count.....the owner came back and counted (no double counting), step brother helped on some of my trees and counted them for himself.........we were paid at the end of the day.

Know what? I wanted to do it and and you got up close and personal to a lot of trees for a few bucks.....but, if you wanted money, you had to go out and work for it....there were no hand outs!

Didn't get paid by my dad for my work on the farm, chicken coop or in the aviary (raised parakeets....abt 500 of them).

Kept busy and out of trouble.........


Barney
 
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Loaned my kids my lawn mower

We had a lawn tractor a push mower, and a weed eater... I let my kids borrow them...their gas and their time and they mowed lawns in the neighborhood. One neighborhood owner had my kids pass his lawn down from older to younger for 10 years, as one left for college the next one picked up his lawn.

I had two farmers getting together one summer so they could both schedule a much deserved vacation and have my daughters look after things while they were gone. Trusted my teenaged girls with the care, milking and feeding of 70 and 75 cows respectively for two weeks each while they were gone.

Haying time, my kids were always in demand. The farmers knew that they would work as long and as hard as it took to get the job done.

They didn't get out of their chores at home either unless they could talk a younger sister into doing them. (usually for an outrageous fee).
 
I know some teens who put up hay all summer. Not all kids are lazy. I suspect, in reading some of these stories, that there were lazy teens in many of your neighborhoods, too. Many of these young guys and gals end up in the military. We all need a little hard work and direction at times.
 
My neighbor suggested that next time I sell tickets to my Fat Farm. Lose weight or your money back. I may have been going at this all wrong.
 
I live in a rural area so a lot of the young men and women work on farms. The kids in the nearby city just want hand outs from mom and dad.

When I was younger I used to deliver news papers on my bike at O dark hundred then get ready for shcool. After school I would mow lawns with an old reel push mower for $2. I hated the yards with dogs because the reel would always flip the poop at me. Each of us kids all had chores to do at home too but we'd switch each week. One of my older brothers hated to do dishes so when his week came up I could always count on another .50 a day :biggrin:

Working and growing up were a way of life back then and things sure have changed.
 
People keep bashing "Kids these days".........well I know more than a few that bust there balls making money for college and are all around good kids. My 18 year old nephew is in his second year of college, works part time and is a major player in the youth branch of the Masons. He is about average in this regard with is friends. Jacob, My friend John's farm hand, has been working his way through college and works a part time job during the school year. My nieces all work on a farm, do well in school and have outside jobs.......frankly if your kid and his freinds are lazy, well take a look in the mirror! I for one know some great kids, with strong work ethics. Some of you are on the edge of bigotry with the brush your using to condemn all of our youth!

It was pulling eye teeth for farmers to get help in the 70's and 80's and that hasn't changed! Fact is the average human will always pick the easy route and always has.
 
My kid had his summer job all lined up...counselor at an 8 week summer camp. At the last minute, the owner realized he had far fewer kids coming to camp this year and Jeremy was the "new guy" so he got dropped. Since then (4 weeks) he has applied for at least a dozen jobs and offered himself for several volunteer positions....nada. He is heading to college this fall and is worried about not making a contribution, he's willing to work, just nothing available. He has become VERY productive around the house since he is unable to find anything. My wife and I have not had to do dishes, laundry or ironing plus he takes care of all of the mowing/yard work. While it's not a full time (or paying) position, he is doing everything he can to work. While I am disappointed that he has not found a "real job", I am encouraged by the fact that he IS contributing. He did prepare for a summer job, just got caught up in the whole economy cycle we are in.
 
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Rick P said:
People keep bashing "Kids these days"...... I for one know some great kids, with strong work ethics. Some of you are on the edge of bigotry with the brush your using to condemn all of our youth!.......
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Oh get off your high horse, no one is CONDEMMING ALL OF OUR YOUTH! We are simply giving examples of what we see everyday. Of course there are good kids BUT there are a LOT of lazy ones still depending on their parents well into their late teens and early twenties who wouldn't likft a finger on a days work involving manual labor!

Bigotry... me... nah, keep those remarks to yourself! We raised a wonderful daughter who went to college, became a teacher and has given us two wonderful grand daughters.
 
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