Making Hay

This past weekend at the museum was hay making time, and I volunteered to help with it. I had a general idea of the type of manual labor for which I had enlisted, but since I am fairly active in athletics, I was not too concerned. (If I can hit a stand up triple by crushing a softball over the right fielder's head as her teammates yell for her to get back, I think I can pitch some hay.) My boss, on the other hand, seemed somewhat concerned. There is a lot that can be said about body language, and on that Saturday morning, I was reading quite a bit of doubt in regards to my abilities to pitch hay all day long.

I am a petite woman; I stand all of five foot five and a half inches, just like my German grandmother once was before she shrank in her old age. She weighed 99 pounds after having her third child. My weight tends to fluctuate between 110 and 115 pounds. Scrawniness is just part of my inherited genetics, but one should never judge a book by its cover. Germans and Poles are stubborn folk. :)

The bonnet was borrowed. It was slightly too large for my head, but it protected me from the sun, which is all I wanted.

Since the museum centers around living history, I had borrowed one of the only dresses from our costume shop that fit me. After dressing in all of the appropriate underpinnings, I realized the skirt band was about half an inch to an inch too tight, and the bodice was slightly too long for my torso. It would have to work, though. I even did my hair in an old-fashioned style popular from the 1830s to about the 1850s. At least I was going to look the part!

To be honest, I had never pitched hay in my life before this past weekend. It was going to be a completely new learning experience for me. I knew from last year that the end of June into the beginning of July was when nineteenth century farmers traditionally cut hay. I had watched last year as the men worked the field and pitched the hay up onto the horse-drawn wagon, and then they went to unload in the barn before they started the whole cycle all over again.

Why walk back out to the hay field when you can catch a ride?

For the record, hay is cut grass that has been dried in order to use as livestock feed over winter. Nineteenth century farmers depended on a good crop. In the 1850s in Minnesota, much of the cut hay was wild grasses growing in fields. By the 1880s, farmers were planting tame hay grasses to cut, but alfalfa, often associated with Minnesota, was not popularly planted until the 1910s. (Minnesota Historic Farms Study, 6.255)

For centuries farmers cut hay by hand with scythes, but by the mid-nineteenth century, various types of mowers began to be used instead. Thankfully, the museum's hay was cut by a sickle mower again this year like it was last year. After the field was cut, the hay needed time to dry, and it needed to be flipped over as well so as to dry the other side. Once air-dried, the men folk gathered the hay into small mounds in order to make the hay ready for pitching. Throughout this process, everything needed to be done after the morning dew evaporated, and everyone concerned prayed for no rain lest the hay crop be ruined.

There was no dew on the ground by the time our morning staff meeting was over, so we were able to get started right away on the day we pitched. I sought instruction on technique and then had to decipher for myself as to how I could best replicate the process. The wife of one of my co-workers and a female co-worker also helped with the pitching, which led to many jokes about a story concerning German women working in the fields pitching hay along side the men, much to the dismay some English-American folk in the nineteenth century. Sometimes it was easy to scoop up a large mound, and other times it was difficult. Sometimes only half to a third of the mound caught on the pitch fork. There was definitely a learning curve for me. There was a young boy to help stamp down the hay on the wagon as it was pitched so as to make room for even more hay each load full. Once we had a full wagon-load, the horses hauled it to the barn to be unloaded, pitched inside, and stacked into a hay mound.

Hay was pitched by lifting the mounds onto the wagon.

The men could grab an entire mound in one forkful. I needed a few tries, but I learned do that with smaller mounds.

We have an expert on staff when it comes to building hay mounds. I could probably listen to him spew his knowledge on any subject for hours, so it was entertaining to be instructed by him concerning how to start the mound and how to build up the support wall. He had us newbies walk the mound to feel for ourselves where the weak spots were so he could strengthen that part of the edge. Then, the edge needed to be raked for any loose hay strands, which were tossed back on top of the pile. After all of the hay was stacked, he salted that layer as an extra precaution against any spontaneous combustion later. Then, it was time to water up and head out in the field for another load.

After it was loaded onto the wagon in the field, the hay needed to be unloaded and stacked in the barn for storage.

The work was not too terrible, but it was tough enough that I was visibly perspiring. I learned that I should probably make a better petticoat and starch the heck out of it for future use. I also learned that when you often relegate yourself to the damsel in distress role (because intelligent women know decent men readily jump at the chance to help a lady in need), apparently it leads to an over-concern for one's well-being when hard work is afoot. As appreciative as I was for the fuss by the men folk involved, being asked multiple times in a matter of a few minutes was actually slightly aggravating.

My combative side came out soon after that when one of the men jokingly told me I pitched hay like a girl. Having grown up familiar with the movie The Sandlot, at first I took it as an insult and started rambling off excuses. After a minute or so, I more calmly pointed out that I was a girl. It was a good reminder that of course I am physically incapable of tossing hay mounds of equal size to that of the men, but that does not make the work someone my size is capable of doing any less valid. I may have needed to pitch a few more forkfuls, but eventually I would get the hay to where it needed to go.

Later in the afternoon, we were able to refresh on switchel, made by one of the ladies on staff. Sometimes called haymaker's punch, switchel is a drink concocted of water, vinegar, ginger, and a sweetener of some kind like honey, maple syrup, or molasses. It was the nineteenth century version of Gatorade, and it actually did help reinvigorate the body. Although, I learned the hard way that it is probably not a good idea to guzzle it down while wearing a corset. Oh well, I survived.

A full wagon load heading back to the barn for unloading with our young helper catching a ride atop the hay.

We worked from about 10 a.m. until about 4 p.m. that day, and I only felt my energy start to wain at the very end of the day. Thankfully, it only took one more wagon-load to store the rest of the hay from the field at that point. I was grateful to be done, but I actually had a lot of fun hanging out with the menfolk that day. (I have always felt more comfortable with the male gender than the female gender; it probably has something to do with spending so much time with my older brothers and their friends as a kid since there was no one my age in the neighborhood.) I may have come close to overheating at the tail end after we had finished, but had I a cotton dress instead of a wool dress, that probably would not have been an issue.

It was nice to prove my boss wrong about spindly ladies and manual labor. I was certainly sore the next day, and my injured shoulder from softball is still tender as I type this, but I have been in worse condition from playing in all-day softball and volleyball tournaments than from pitching hay. I guess it helps to be a physically active person. The museum will probably cut hay again close to Labor Day, and I say bring on the challenge. Hard work and honest sweat were valued in the nineteenth century, but having been raised by farm kids, it is something I have been taught to value as well.

(Photos published with consent of the photographer. Copyright © 2014 Lisa Meyers.)