If you watch the machinery that is used nowadays in the hay field, you will notice that things have changed a great deal – unless you are in Amish country, that is.

My first glimpse of haying done the old way was when my husband and I stopped at an Amish farm where they had the hay loaded on a wagon and were using a hay fork that rode on a track in the barn. Our barn had one of those, but I had never seen it in action. When my husband asked if he could bring his wife to see how the hay was unloaded, the men were very cordial. All they asked was that we did not bring a camera.

That demonstration was not the only new thing I saw that day. The boys who were working with the horses were just that – boys – probably not 10 years old yet. They handled those horses with skill. Their bare feet did not appear to be a hindrance either. We probably spent about an hour just watching things being done the old way.

The hay fork was not the only piece of the older equipment they used. We noticed the old hay loaders in the field. I had actually seen those at work before, yet it was fun to watch the hay ride up through the loader and onto the wagon.

Farming was never an easy way to make a living. The hours are long and the labor is hard. Never underestimate the strength of a farm worker. He/she may not work out daily, but the exercise that is part of labor is comprehensive. There was no doubt about it. My farmer husband was muscular.

Not a requirement for farming, but he also had huge hands. That is one of the first things I noticed about him. When he put his hand in mine, my small hand was lost. When my grandson was born at an out-of-town hospital, evidently, the man taking photos for a hospital publication noticed that feature, too. He asked my husband if he could take a picture of his hand along with a picture of a new baby’s hand.

Haying was part of our everyday farm work. We did it the old way, according to today’s standards, but not the way the Amish who we observed did it. On our farm, we used a sickle mower, a standard rake, then a baler that shot out small bales tied with baler twine. For a year or so, the men used a baler with a kicker, but that was more trouble than it was worth. If you were turning a corner when a bale was done, it shot off into the field somewhere.

The trickiest part of the haying process was the knotter. It did not take much to throw the knotter off kilter. My husband was pretty good at fixing things but often, he sheared off a pin or two before it was in working order.

Everything worked well while the children were living at home. They both helped load and unload hay. My daughter was my eyes and ears during the haying process. She called me from the barn when they were on the last load so that I could put supper on the table in a timely fashion. Hickory Heights is located above the main farm, so I could not see what was going on.

I have allergies, so helping with the tossing of bales was out of the question. I teared up and my nose ran so much that my husband always sent me home to cook and bake.

After the children left for college, it was tough to recruit labor for haying. Luckily some boys down the road had jobs that got them home in the late afternoon. My husband timed the process so that they would be able to help. My father-in-law was always the tractor driver.

When grandpa could no longer run the baler, my husband was in a fix. By then, the children were off to college. On a couple occasions I was recruited to drive the tractor. To say that my husband did not have much confidence in me is an understatement. He told me to stop when I came to a woodchuck hole. Now, you have to understand that the field was full of holes. He jumped off the wagon and guided the tractor through each and every one of them.

It was very intimidating for me. To make things even worse, my father-in-law was sitting in a chair next to the field watching the whole procedure. He never said anything to me, but I am sure he had many thoughts on the matter.

About that time, my husband began to have second thoughts about the farming process. He hired a man to milk when we went off to each of the children’s college graduation ceremonies. That was not satisfactory either. A substitute milker could get milk out of the cow, but he did not care for things like my husband did.

My husband decided to sell the milk herd. He thought that having only young stock would be better.

The day the animal trailer pulled up to take the cows was a sad day for all of us. We did go to Randolph to visit the cows to see how the farmer was doing with them sometime later.

When our son came back to the area, he had plans for the farm. He did not want to milk cows twice a day, but he wanted to have animals and utilize the fields and the barn. The dairy farm soon became a meat-producing farm.

Now he has someone custom bale his hay and he buys what he needs to supplement that. That does not mean he is off the hook. One night, he and his hired man hauled hay until just to get everything under cover. Another night, he and his family hauled home several loads of hay and mowed them away, taking them into the wee hours. Haying is hard work, no matter how you look at it.

Ann Swanson writes from her home in Russell, Pa. Contact at hickoryheights1@verizon.net