Hauling hay on a wooden sled, exciting and dangerous

Hauling hay on a wooden sled, exciting and dangerous. Grandpa Leo and dad built a sled from full 2x12 boards to haul hay bales from the field to a stack or barn. The sled must have been about eight feet wide and twice that long with a cable attached to the front of the sled and hooked to the tractor . We pulled it with our Model G, John Deere tractor, the B just wouldn‘t pull much hay.

I liked the G, it had an electric starter but could be cranked if the batteries were dead. The Model B had to be started by hand though. It had an exposed flywheel that you just grabbed hold of and gave it a spin (it almost always started). Usually I could start the B without opening the petcocks. The petcocks are valves on each cylinder (there is only two on these two models, Johnny Pops) that can be opened to relieve some of the compression. The G almost required the petcocks be opened to start even with the electric starter.

Back to hauling hay on a sled. You needed a tractor driver and a stacker. I was very happy when Bruce got big enough to be a stacker. The tractor driver would just drive beside the bales of hay and the stacker would grab the bales with hay hooks and stack them. Sounds easy and it was except when dad got the bales so heavy they out weighed me. Then the driver had to stop and the stacker would have to drag the bale up to the sled now because the driver went by it. The stacker would have to decide whether to buck the heavy thing up to an empty spot or start a new bottom layer. Start a new bottom layer sounds good but some times there are a bunch of heavy ones and you just can’t have that much bottom layer before going up with the stack.

Then when you get to the front of the sled the danger and excitement begins. It is probably being pulled between two and five miles per hour. If your little brother was mad at you he would just drive too fast to keep up with the bales. The driver has to watch where he is going or he runs over bales. The stacker must be careful to not step off the front of the sled so it doesn’t run over him and smear him under the sled until the driver noticed. The driver would never be able to stop in time.

Exciting!