Getting hay bales

Wednesday I got hay from Tony. By Wednesday night I was dead tired. I'm getting old, or I got soft and weak over winter, or both.

I didn't start loading the hay bales until after 2 pm. After all, how long would it take? From a distance the stack of bales didn't look big.

I finished moving the bales around 9 pm. It was getting dark. When I went to close the barn door I found the door slipped off one of the wheels. I tried fixing the door but between the dark and how tired I was, I left it for today.

I found the bales to be heavy, heavier than the 50 - 60 lb bales from my hayfield. Tony's bales must have been 75+ lbs. Tossing these bales up on a third layer in my pickup box got harder with each bale.

My first load had 24 bales. My second load had 30 bales - but only because I stood on top of Tony's stack and tossed the bales over to the pickup instead of up.

Tony came home and offered me the use of his flatbed trailer. (I need to get me one!) I loaded 66 bales on his trailer. By now it was late afternoon and tossing the bales on the forth level was hard. I got 6 bales up there before I quit. I counted 20 bales left to move and decided to load them in the pickup after unloading and returning Tony's trailer.

Keep in mind that not only did I load the bales, I unloaded them, carried them in the barn, and stacked them four to five levels high.

I got a workout! I must have moved around 5 tons of hay. Even though the temperature was in the low 50s F, I was soaked in sweat. I got hay all over me. I should have worn heavy denim jeans instead of a light pair of pants as my legs are scratched.

I only took the bales under tarps or in Tony's small shed. The bales outside the tarps I left as they had been rained on and were brown. Even some the bales under the tarps were bad as the tarps leaked in a few spots. Also, the bottom layer sat directly on the ground and were bad for a few inches. The cattle can pick through and ignore that part of those bales. I left them outside the barn to dry off. And wet hay does smell.

There were many fat mice in among the bales. Not only did I see mouse tunnels, I exposed three or four mice every so often when I lifted a bale. Fat mice! They were so fat they could hardly run. I left them be and didn't step on them. I also found two small dead cats between a few bales and later the momma cat, large and fat, came out from between some of the bales and ran off.

When I got in the house I had a phone message from Dan saying he was going to Missoula Wednesday night and not Thursday. I was on my own to get to the Missoula Livestock Auction on Thursday. Here I thought I could rest on the way down as Dan drove.

After a quick supper I went to bed hours earlier than normal. I was so tired and stiff and sore I could hardly move. I'm getting old.