Hay Baler

     One of my biggest regrets was that I weaned Garth too early.  I weaned him in October so I could pick spuds with Stanley, after our own were finished.  The most I ever picked in one day was 500 sacks.  I could pick faster than Stan but he lifted all the baskets to dump.  We needed money that year and every thing I earned went right to the bank to pay off the loan, we had taken for the summer expenses.  Prices were low and Jess didn’t want to sell anything to pay the note.  

      Jess decided to buy a hay baler.  They were expensive but he justified buying it by baling for the neighbors.  One week it had rained and every ones hay was down and ready to be bailed.  Jess usually didn’t work on Sunday, but he thought he had better this Sunday because of his neighbors hay getting ruined.  He had trouble with the bailer and when he tried to crank it, the crank slipped and hit him on the knee.  He thought he had broken his leg but only bruised the knee.  He said he knew he shouldn’t have been working on Sunday and that was the last time he bailed hay on Sunday.  

       I would take the three boys with me and we would clean up the hay at the turns and run errands and do what we could to help.  Jess took a job at Terreton bailing hay and stacking it.  I went with him and cooked for the crew and lived for six weeks in a dirty shack of a house.  It was a good time to just enjoy my sons.  It was difficult but we survived.  The men would shoot pheasants, as they came home from the field and I cleaned them and cooked them.   

       That winter, Jess got a job in Montana, baling hay out of a stack.  It looked like good money but it was a disaster.  It was cold and the machine kept breaking own.  I was home trying to take care of the cows.  I didn’t lose any calves while he was gone.   The farmer he was working for killed a moose that had been bothering the hay stack.  He didn’t want the meat so when Jess brought the bailer home,  he brought the moose meat.  He was worried when he was stopped at a check point but they only looked at the baler and let him go through.  I don’t usually like wild meat but this was good and lasted us most of the winter.

Jess did a big bailing job near Firth.  He thought it odd that neighbors balers were sitting in their yards and yet Jess got the job.  When he finished the hay the farmer said he would pay Jess in a few days.  He never did pay anything.  This ended Jess's money making venture.