COLUMN: Where were these when we were younger?

Surely there are more than a few of you who remember those “good ol’ days” of pitching 80-pound bales up to that friend/family member on the trailer. 

He’d stack them as high as he could, and—if you were lucky—you might get to hop on and catch a break for a couple minutes, leaving behind that boiling hot hay field for an even hotter barn where you’d essentially reverse the whole process. 

Thankfully, those days are a distant memory for most of us, said hay grower Gary Kusak. 

Advancements in machinery and technology traded all that hard labor and sore backs for mechanical ease. 

Making hay still takes work, but Brad Anderle, who owns all the equipment, and Kusak, who owns the grass farm, recently worked together to get their second cutting of alfalfa and tifton mix with a Bale Baron Bundler. 

They made use of the new equipment at Kusak’s irrigated field near the Komensky area. It bundles 21 square bales into roughly 8- x 4-foot blocks that just one man with a front-end loader can then haul away to the barn with ease, all in a fraction of the time of what it used to take a sizable crew of (preferably) football linebackers. 

Or, the likes of you and me. Whichever happened to be handier.

That football team never showed up at our place, in case you were wondering.

Kusak said there were enough people stopping to watch the new bundler in action, that he and Anderle decided to take a couple of pictures and send them along to the local news office.

All totaled, Kusak said they made 871 square bales off that particular cut earlier this month. He was able to haul it off—by himself—and store it away in about 3½ hours.

“That’s way different than it used to be, that’s for sure,” he said.

No wonder folks had to stop and watch. 

Of course, most folks in Lavaca County probably forgot what a hay bale coming out of the field looks like in this hot, dry year. I know I sure had.

But such is about par for most things on the farm. You catch one good rainy season, like we did in 2021, and you can pretty well bank on nature testing your resolve for a good year or two after. 

As I write this story on Monday evening, the skies opened for the first time in months and dumped about 1½ inches of rain on me. All in less than 15 minutes.

More than that much, most likely, but It’s hard to catch much in a rain gauge when all the wet stuff is blowing in sideways. 

Still, it was easily the best rain I’ve seen at my place this year. Perhaps it’s a sign of slightly better conditions to come.

Compared to what we endured so far in 2022, we can hope, at very least. 

If not, we all may be headed to Komensky soon, just to sit a stare. And try to recall what a hayfield ought to look like.