About this episode

Bobbie Emery reflects on the experience of stacking hay on a hot day and the memories associated with it.

I was thinking, that if I was ever told I only had one hour to live, but I could spend it doing anything I wanted, I’d choose stacking 400 bales of hay in our hay loft, on a 97-degree day – because that hour would last an eternity. Normally we wait until the weather turns cooler to get the hay in, but we were worried that the price is going to skyrocket again this year, so we went ahead and ordered it. It was delivered, of course, on what turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. When the truck arrives, we put our hay “elevator” on the bed of the truck where the driver can load the bales onto the conveyor that transports them up to the loft, where I stand waiting to unload them. The fifty-pound bales come quickly, one after another, and it’s always a struggle just to keep up. I grab each bale as soon as it comes within reach, but before it falls off the end of the conveyor, either dropping back down to the ground - or worse yet, derailing the rest of the load. Once I’ve successfully grabbed the bale, I throw it to the person doing the stacking. Each bale lands with a decisive “thunk”. The interminable mechanical clacking of the hay elevator reminds me incessantly that…

People in this episode

Host: Bobbie Emery

Topics covered

• hay stacking
• farming
• weather
• labor
• nostalgia

Keywords

• hay
• farming
• stacking
• labor
• heat
• nostalgia
• elevator

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