Making Hay - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Making Hay

This time of year on the farm while growing up was always an extremely busy time. Back in the 50’s and 60’s, my Dad could make a decent living while supporting a family of seven only farming 100 acres. He rotated the crops each year by planting corn, wheat, oats, hay and then back again to corn in sequential years. That way he didn’t have to use much if any fertilizer or herbicide as each crop took out or added the appropriate nutrients to complement the crop planned for the following year. Mom used a similar technique for her garden as noted in the diagram below.

Weeds were prevalent in the fields and garden, but us kids would be sent out with hoes to clear them out several times each season! I can recall times with Dad driving by one of our fields when he suddenly spots a weed, stops the car and sends me out into the field to pull it out.

Thinking back on those times, using today’s terminology, we had an extremely sustainable and organic farm. Literally nothing was wasted. All food scraps were fed to the hogs and no more than a grocery bag of trash was accumulated each week, which went into the coal furnace to help heat the house. The manure in the stables was spread over the land and plowed under in the spring to provide natural fertilizer for the corn, which depleted the land more than any other crop. Any metal junk was dumped into 55 gallon drums and collected by the high school’s Future Farmers of America organization during twice-a-year scrap drives. I can’t think of a single item of waste generated by our farm during those years. Amazing!

July meant it was time to harvest the wheat and oats, bail hay and straw and cultivate the corn. Those efforts along with the routine livestock feeding and milking of the cows lead to really long days working in the heat and humidity of a typical Ohio summer. Dad would enjoy every minute though, especially if the weather had cooperated and the yields were good. He knew the family’s livelihood was directly impacted by a successful harvest.

Of course, as kids, we didn’t really have that same appreciation, so found the work much less enjoyable and a real chore most of the time. I can recall sweating profusely in stifling heat and dusty conditions up in the hay mow packing away bails as they were loaded onto an elevator from the wagon full of bailed hay. Each load held 100 bails each weighing about 75 pounds, so it was quite a workout. We much preferred the lighter straw bails which also didn’t itch as much as the hay. Hay was used to feed the milk cows and the straw was used to bed down the stables all winter while the cows remained in the barn. During other times of the year, they were let out to pasture to eat grass as pictured in this aerial photo of our family farm. Note the cows under the shade trees near the creek at the upper left corner.

Harvesting the wheat and oats was a much more enjoyable process, primarily because it was significantly less labor intensive. The harvester or combine as it was called back then was quite a machine that intrigued me to no end.

Amazing how it could cut the stalks and thresh out the grain, separate the straw and auger the grain into hopper wagons that would self unload into an elevator carrying the harvest up to the storage granary in the barn, all by barely lifting a finger compared to the hard work associated with the hay and straw bailing process.

But Dad would always remind us how good we had it compared to when he was younger, as they farmed with horse-drawn equipment. He would tell about all the neighbors convening for a threshing “party”, that really wasn’t much of a party, at least until the work was done, when the food and drink was served well into the night.

But of all the chores at that busy time of year, cultivating corn was by far my favorite farm task, as it meant I could listen to the radio mounted on the tractor while traversing the rows and rows of corn. It provided a restful interlude to the busy farm life during the summer months.

Farm life back then was indeed a challenge, which was the primary reason I chose a different career path and studied engineering. However, I’m very grateful for the farm experiences that helped me throughout my entire career and beyond, especially with the skills to fix things and solve problems, along with the farm work ethic ingrained into me.