The Slide

Dad and grandpa used to call this the slide. I looked it up on the web and found several names for it: hay slide, beaver slide, hay stacker. Surprisingly I found that at least one in Montana is still in use.

Visit it at: (I had to remove the link. It has a virus.)

This one was "parked" about a quarter mile north of our house. I remember it used to be up against a rail fence but the fence has been removed. Dad and grandpa used to stack hay with this thing and a couple teams of horses. They used a buck rake (maybe I can find a picture of one of these later) to bring the hay to the slide. The rake put it's tines down on the slide tines. The slide tines were then raised by horses pulling the long cables to the top where the hay would drop off in a pile. It is about thirty feet high maybe more.

It is mounted on metal wheels so it can be towed by the horses too. That way they could make several thirty or so foot tall haystacks around the farm to later feed to the cattle.

Now, I don't remember any of that. I just remember it being a place to go play or hide out. As you can see there is a large area under the slide that is shady. The only thing that was a little spooky was the bones. There were always bones under it. I think rabbit size.

After photographing hawks and owls for a few years now I understand what was going on. What a great place to take your kill, eat it and still be on lookout for more. But the bones and owl pellets were always a little disconcerting.