My brother has brought up the topic today. He intends to be 'hauling'.
High for today? 93 degrees. Humidity? Roughly 90-percent.
As a kid, there were a list of farm job which were on some miserability listing. Hauling hay for me....was about a 95 on a list going up to 100. Maybe if you'd hauled in April or October.....you wouldn't feel so bad about.
The amount liquid replenishment? You could easily go through a gallon of water in four hours.
There were four key elements to work of the day:
1. Stacking on the truck or trailer in a way that it would be stable for five levels. Everyone has a particular method. And the worst pain was to have it up to four levels and the truck hitting some groundhog hole and tossing the load and the two guys off the truck. The guy on the tractor or driving the truck? You wanted this person to be absolutely 'slow' in turns and never stopping.
2. Timing this between rainstorms. You were basically looking for a seven day period where you could cut the hay....have it dry out enough.....then haul it. The doppler image was surveyed hour by hour.
3. Backing a trailer with a tractor into a tight barn area to be unloaded. With very little to see, this would eat up fifteen minutes of attempts.
4. Finally, came the worry of the lightning storm. Nine times out of ten....you could get this done and no rain. But on that 10-percent situation....you were basically observing dark clouds off in the distance and estimating that you had a 90-minute window before it arrived. This pressured you into doing stupid things and doubling up the odds of a screw-up.
Oddly enough....about two years after I left the farm....my dad went to round-bales. The trauma and adventure? Gone. In recent years, for some odd reason....the square bales have returned in some ways and folks seem to desire the suffering side of hauling hay. Guys sit around the general store and talk over the differing strategies of round versus square. Each gives a scientific view and personal suffering from square bail years (usually having fall 20 feet from the back of a truck).
At the end of the day....you walked back into an air conditioned house....then took a shower to wash off the sweat, and you emerged ready for a catfish dinner somewhere. That was the only positive moment of the whole day, in my humble opinion.