Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Only on the Beaman Farm

We left for a short trip with friends last night to pay respects to one who'd passed. We were able to slip away because our son, after work, came home and baled 45 big round bales. And he was able to do it fairly easily given the machinery we now have to work with. Not like the old days and that reminded me of a past haying story.

I'm guessing it was either the summer of '83 or '84. Mary and I were out baling square bales with me loading, Mary driving. We filled up one load and left it parked at the bottom of the long hillside we were baling. Just finishing the second load near the top of the hill, I stepped off and unhooked the rack from the baler as she was still driving the tractor and baler along in preparation of hooking onto the third rack. The loaded rack I unhooked started rolling backwards on its own, but no problem, I just employed by tried and true method of stepping on the tongue until the rack came to a stop. It did not. Then it became a situation of waiting and watching, there was nothing else to do but cuss. The rack started off slowly, picking up speed as it took a winding route down the hill where you may remember, I said we'd parked the first loaded wagon. Traveling a distance of many football fields in this winding arc, the runaway wagon crashed into the only other object in the field, the other loaded hay rack, hitting it hard enough to knock all the bales off the front half of the rack onto the ground. And although, we now had to reload the first rack, there were no injuries sustained from this mishap, well not counting the injuries sustained by Mary as she lay on the ground laughing.

2 comments:

  1. Hay, that's pretty funny. Sounds like the situation really unraveled.

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  2. As I recall, I thought it was a bad idea to unhook the rack while we were moving uphill, and I voiced my protestation. What can I say...being right makes me happy?

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