When we built our barn, the second story was intended to store hay. Once we had more animals, buying hay at top price a few bales at a time lost it’s appeal. I knew a guy with fields and arranged to drive the horse trailer over to “get some hay”

Now, my brother worked hay fields as a teenager, so I should have been prepared. Nope. Wore shorts. Loaded sixty bales of hay into the trailer. Shorts was a mistake.

Back at the farm, a new problem popped up….how do you get the hay into the hayloft? My uncle the dairy farmer had a thingy that the tractor powered and sort of moved it up a conveyor belt. I did not have a thingy. What I did have was a science degree. So I did a lot of useless math, and then just bought a big pulley wheel, a few brackets, bolts, a big hook, and rope.

After an hour of dangling over the upper door pre-drilling and ratcheting on the bolts, my new contraption was ready. I went down stairs, hooked on a bale, and tugged. the bracket bent right in half. Perfect. I decided the bracket wasn’t the most important component and went back to hoisting. My kids had the job of unhooking the bales and I would arrange them later.

It turns out I was standing too close to the barn and it took a great deal of energy to pull up a 75 pound hay bale. I realized my mistake, backed up about ten feet and it was better!

Now this routine was repeated twice a summer, until I got a deal on 200 bales. I waited until dark since it was cooler, and the kids hoisted while I stacked the hay. I was almost finished when I heard the tractor. My wife grabbed the rope, drove back, and the bale shot up to the loft. Where was she about four years ago?