June 29th, 1957

 

Somewhat like our haying but not really

Somewhat like our Jayhawk but not really

You can get the idea BUT this was not like ours!

These pictures come about because of the title of this blog.  I will explain later.  Our Jayhawk stacker had a front end kind of like the middle picture but it was attached to the front end of our "M" tractor.  The top picture kind of gives one an idea what our stacks looked like.  The bottom picture is not at all like our farm but what it does is tells the story of putting hay into the hay barn.  Our barn was one story and we had a door on the north side.  With the Ford tractor pulling the hay wagon we would drive up to the door and pitch the hay into the hay barn as we called it.  

But what does this have to do with my title today?  Well June 29th, 1957 was brother Dave's 13th birthday and he had his mind on having a fun day.  So what did he find out when he got out of bed?  Dad said the hay was dry and we would be stacking today.  Dave was not happy.  He did not see WHY he had to stack hay on his birthday!!!  He and Joan were in the stack and I was on the Ford tractor pulling the rack behind cleaning up hay that got missed.  We were in the alfalfa field north of Rollof's ALL day but we did finish putting up the hay which meant it got up before any rain.  Rain on the hay would diminish the quality of hay for the cows.  I do not remember how Dave got to celebrate his birthday, if he did, but into adulthood even when he was so sick he would tall about the time he HAD to stack hay on his birthday and he was so mad!

Somewhere I have a fairly good picture of what our Jayhawk looked like as it was attached to the front end of the "M".  As one could perhaps guess pretty much all the pictures of the Jayhawk stacker are ones that were pulled by horses!  Why does that not surprise the Lee kids???  It is another way of saying that our farming methods were somewhat behind.  As we stacked hay everyone else was baling hay.  I could go on but will end here.

As I sit back this morning and remember the farm it is easy to see what and how the fire affected our entire family.  It was after the fire that burned EVERYTHING to the ground that Mom/Dad moved to town and then sold most of the farm.  What if we still had the farm land---an interesting thought.