How To Build A Traditional Hay Stack?

[stuckmotor]

Somewhere, maybe Youtube, I saw a haysweep lift the load to maximum extension above the tractor driver's head and dump it behind him onto the stack. It looked like a good way to get dead, to me.

 

[Egon]

What we used to call a farmhand used to stack hay. The first is the Farmhand with what looks like a manure fork on it. The models show hay sweeps. They dumped to the front

 

[vtsnowedin]

When I went to Russia a couple of years ago, I saw lots of haystacks. somewhat similar to this one.

If you want to learn to stack hay, find a rural Russian friend, and volunteer to come and help during haying season.

I think they all had the pole in the center. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to "build" one.

The first year we had some property in the country, my Dad had an idea that we should cut and stack our own hay. We cut a pasture using a sickel bar on an Ariens tiller, then managed to get it piled up. It was a very loose stack, and a lot of work. We covered it with a tarp. Anyway, after that we either bought hay, or later had someone come and bale our hay.

Our neighbor's barn has a wooden track and trolley system down the middle of the hay loft that I'm pretty sure was to stack loose hay, although it hasn't been used for years.

That stack with a pole in it is what I was talking about back on page one. I used to have a barn with a track hay fork like the trolley system you are talking about. In fact the forks and the track are still here in a bone pile. You would back a wagon of loose hay into the barn floor and set the four fork tines into the back half of the load then unhitch one of the horses from the wagon and onto the end of the pull rope. As you drove the horse ahead the half of the load would get pulled up to the track (two angle irons not wood) up at the ridge pole of the barn, trip a toggle and run out into the middle of the bay and dump. back the horse up and set in the front half and repeat. About a half ton to a pull but not much faster then just pitching it off unless you barn was high and the fork was moving it to a higher loft then the floor level you backed the wagon into.

 

[stuckmotor]

What we used to call a farmhand used to stack hay. The first is the Farmhand with what looks like a manure fork on it. The models show hay sweeps. They dumped to the front

I've tried to relocate the backward dump again without success. I want to find it again to see just how it operated.