Vintage and Modern Hay timing

On 30th June 2009 my dad went to bale some hay for a farmer, who lives not far from where we farm. My dad has been baling his hay for a number of years and I went to help this time. The first job we did was using wooden hay rakes to rake most of the hay up and put it back into the rows, since the farmer went to fast with his 1948 Grey Ferguson tractor pulling a Massey Harris hay turner to row up. Dad started to bale with his 2007 Zetor and John Deere baler whilst me and the farmer were still raking up the hay, especially on the corners, ( when the farmer was rowing up he went round and round, in which made abit more difficult for dad to bale.  We managed to do all the field with any problems, apart from now and again the baler kept on throwing out loose ones, due to the string changing balls, we had a slight rest at the end while where waiting for the farmer to row up the last row the one next the hedge.  And the funny thing was he rowed it up the wrong way round, so dad couldn’t start baling again until he finished.

We had quick cup of tea at the end, we decided set off home to get our trailer because we were going take a load of hay back to our farm. The farmer suggested that I stop to help him to start loading his trailer because his team of his two men hadn’t turned up at the time when we were there. But I declined his offer due to me going to get my hair cut. So after a spot of tea at home we set off again with the trailer and headed back to the field. Dad put the bales of hay on the trailer and I stacked them, we were nearly finished when I heard the rattling of the wooden trailer behind the fergy. He pulled up next us stopped the tractor and jumped off his team started load the old wooden trailer, he asked us if we wouldn’t mind stopping on the top of hill whilst they set of down the hill, only because each time he moved the tractor he let the brake off and free wheeled it down, until he got to the bottom or as I said he run out of steam. By then we had strapped our load on and made our way down to the bottom where they were finishing off loading. He started the fergy with one turn of the handle he jumped on with other two helpers on the back and made his way up the hill back to the barn. With the front end of the tractor bouncing and struggling up the hill, due to the weight of the hay on the old wooden trailer with old cast iron wheels. We jumped on our modern tractor and made our way home. It was nice to see old machinery mixed with new.