Haying

[Olypen]

In an earlier WNW thread, Ron Bishop brought up interesting facts about haying in the 1940's.  I said that I'd see if I could find haying photos.  Here are a couple.

"Hay Rick on a farm in Le Sueur County, Minnesota about 1950".  This long stack of hay was called a rick in this part of the country.  I think it must have been the last stack of hay on our family farm.  The fence posts on the left-hand side were hand split from one of the wood lots on the farm.  When new fences were built shortly after this photo was taken, cedar posts were bought ready-made from the lumber yard. The photo that's copied here is an original contact print with the famous deckle edges.



"City Nephew with his Country Uncle about 1920".  The boy's pitchfork is pretty clear; the uncle's is lost in the light.  The hay behind them is the start of a cone-shaped stack; it would be built up carefully and even more carefully topped.  Our family used to  joke about "temporary tops" because now and then when rain threatened the stacker had to have a quick solution; we joked because sometimes "temporary" became "permanent".  The boy in the photo was too young to help much yet; but it was common for adult city relatives to help out from time to time.

[Philip]

I've got one from the 1940s -- my father pulling a haycart:


Man pulls cart by Felip1, on Flickr

...And another from 1957 of one of my sisters having buried another:


Having buried her baby sister in the hay by Felip1, on Flickr

[LarryD]

Words can't explain what I feel.

[lesged]

Olypen and Philip,

Your photos are relics of history and I join Larry in reacting with great emotion to these scenes of long ago. Not so many generations ago the majority of people had some direct connection with a farm, even for city kids like me. Maybe it was for only a few days or a week per year with Gediman relatives in Maine. 

Seeing your old family photos and thinking about Kodak filing for bankruptcy this week puts fear in my mind whether digital images will ever be past down to later generations. Somehow I doubt our digital files will be seen by our great grandchildren. There's something about a negative and print that may seem so retro to many, but has lasted well over a hundred years.

Thanks for showing us your pictorial gem, and to Ron for inspiring this thread.

[torment]

Nice recollections of haymaking.  The only thing missing is the smell - aagh.

Re Olypen's mention of ricks.  In the UK the ricks were circular with conical tops made from, I think, reeds.  These were topped out in my village with wooden figures, usually redcoat soldiers with black bearskin hats and arms that rotated in the wind.  These folk art figures are sought after now. 

[Philip]

Around here those moveable roofs were square with pointed conical tops.  They were called "hay barracks" -- the same last syllable as "ricks" may indicate the two names were the same word once.  I think I have a photo of one that I took eight or ten years ago but I can't lay my hands on it.  By that time, the 21st century, it wasn't being used anymore but was just lying mouldering in someone's farmyard.

The Dictionary of Newfoundland English http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/azindex/pages/205.html has an entry for the term. 

[Olypen]

Larry and Les:  Thanks for your comments.  I, too, wonder about how digital photos will be preserved.  Snapshots, at least some of them, did fairly well in black albums and shoeboxes; and you could pick them up and look at them without any intermediate technology.

Torment:  Yes, the aroma of freshly cut hay is memorable.  I had never heard of the decorations put on top of the hay rick.  It would be great to have a photo of one.  I remember tarps thrown over ricks, anchored by ropes with old tires or blocks of wood at the end.  There was nothing like that on the rick in my photo; I suspect that it was rough hay fed across the fence in feedbins-- the finer hay was inside. 

Philip:  Those are fascinating photos of the folks having some fun with the horse cart!  And a fascinating usage of "barrack" which I had never heard. A couple of dictionaries I looked at say "rick" comes from Old English and "barrack" comes from the Romance languages, so they may not be related.

[torment]

Torment:  Yes, the aroma of freshly cut hay is memorable.  I had never heard of the decorations put on top of the hay rick.  It would be great to have a photo of one.  I remember tarps thrown over ricks, anchored by ropes with old tires or blocks of wood at the end.  There was nothing like that on the rick in my photo; I suspect that it was rough hay fed across the fence in feedbins-- the finer hay was inside. 

This shows straw stacks but hayricks were similar.  In this case the little stick-up things were more like pins used in ten pin bowling rather than the more exotic soldiers with windmilling arms - but you get the idea. 

http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/xx39/superspadge/Strawricksorstacks.jpg

[Philip]

Philip:  Those are fascinating photos of the folks having some fun with the horse cart!  And a fascinating usage of "barrack" which I had never heard. A couple of dictionaries I looked at say "rick" comes from Old English and "barrack" comes from the Romance languages, so they may not be related.

Yes, you're right. I was waxing etymological without doing the correct thing: checking the dictionaries!

[Olypen]

Torment:  Thanks for linking that great photo of straw ricks with the pins; the ricks themselves are highly finished and trimmed, aren't they?  I have seen photos of grain stacks over here that were quite nicely finished, too; just a bit before my time so I missed ever seeing a real one.
Philip:  Well, the case may not be closed on rick/barrack-- I just did a quick check.  I hope you can find that photo of the hay barracks.

[Ronald Bishop]

My dad was a wood cutter and sold wood by the cord. A cord can be broken down into 'ricks'. A rick of wood is the face of stack of wood, piled into a cord. A rick can be 1/3 of a cord with 16" wood or 1 half cord of 24" wood.
      The guy and the boy are standing in front of a 'shock' of hay. When the hay is cut it lays in windrows, then shock piled to dry. That is the way horse  hay is handled. After it has dried enough it is loaded onto a wagon or truck and hauled to the main stack where it was place till ready to use. And there was a proper way to place it on the stack to protect it from the weather.


My dad and uncle digging out of the snow with a load of stovewood.
The tall dead trees are what was left from the 1910 forest fire--- excellent stove wood. { the picture is about 1938?}

[Olypen]

Ron:  That's a great photo of getting the truck (?) out of the snow.  I'd like to hear more about that tractor that's doing the pulling-- looks like it has tracks on it?  Thanks for straightening out what the pile of hay is in the photo I posted-- I do remember hayshocks now and I think you're right that's what's in the photo.  I wondered why it looked so loose because the man (my Dad) was a very careful stacker, and your identification straightens it out.  There's a man in our neighborhood who cuts "fireplace" wood on his property and sells it around the city; I think his business has probably changed some because of rules about bringing wood from one area to another (disease control).  Did you have woodsplitters in your area-- men who would go from place to place, stay with the family for a while, split the wood into "chunks" or sticks, and then move on?  Here they were still around in the 40's and then disappeared.

[Ronald Bishop]

The tractor was a Fordson wheel tractor converted to a crawler. A very dangerous piece of equipment to operate, in a hard pull they would flip over backwards.
   No wood splitters as I know of. but there were lumberjacks that lived mostly in logging camps, and spent part of the winter in taverns till the were broke.
  A woman complained that dad had shorted her on a load of wood in town,well dad hired a guy from the tavern to go stack it for her. well most of the blocks of wood were either split in half or left in the round. Well the guy he hired to stack it split it into quarters and when stacked she ended up with about a half rick too much. Dad didn't charge her for it.

:rolleyes: