How To Build A Traditional Hay Stack?

[3v0]

My brother did custom hay stack moving. He started with the type pulled with a tractor and at the peak had 3 truck mounted units.

When big round were fairly new I was riding in station wagon with a guy who nearly killed us by running into the back end of a trailer (may have been a tractor pulled stack mover) loaded with big round bales. He cranked the wheel over and was going down the road mostly side ways when we hit. The back 1/2 of the car collided with the trailer, most everything from about a foot back from our heads was trashed.

I spend a good many hours in my youth driving flag behind slow moving farm machinery. I guess people need to have more kids or hire more help.

 

[AKfish]

My brother did custom hay stack moving. He started with the type pulled with a tractor and at the peak had 3 truck mounted units.

When big round were fairly new I was riding in station wagon with a guy who nearly killed us by running into the back end of a trailer (may have been a tractor pulled stack mover) loaded with big round bales. He cranked the wheel over and was going down the road mostly side ways when we hit. The back 1/2 of the car collided with the trailer, most everything from about a foot back from our heads was trashed.

I spend a good many hours in my youth driving flag behind slow moving farm machinery. I guess people need to have more kids or hire more help.

You got really, really lucky! I wanna think I was in the 7th grade or so... and a carload of highschool girls (5) was coming or going from a party and they hit the backend of an unloaded, tractor drawn stackmover.

Hit at windshield height and sheared the whole roof off. The car was pinned completely under the mover. They were all killed.

AKfish

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I've never had luck cutting hay with a chainsaw. I've heard of it but it always jams between the clutch and cover until the chain binds up when I've tried it. I have a block of hay 30+ feet long, 10+ feet wide by 10+ feet tall left in a barn. The old folks had hay knives to saw blocks out to sell, we work at it a bit every year with pitch forks but are on a face, not the top so its slow going.

I'd be terrified of burning the place down running a chainsaw cutting hay in a barn. It just seems too easy to throw a spark and poof!

 

[vtsnowedin]

I'd be terrified of burning the place down running a chainsaw cutting hay in a barn. It just seems too easy to throw a spark and poof!

That's an outside the barn thing for sure. Besides the spark potential there is the noise and exhaust which would upset the cows or other stock.

 

[Egon]

The hay may have the same effect as chainsaw pants.

 

[stuckmotor]

Here are the results of a search for the Farmhand F10 loader. It seems to have been capable of building and feeding tall haystacks without a beaver slide.
farmhand f10 loader - Google Search

Here are beaverslides
beaver slide - Dogpile Images Search

 

[3v0]

Here are the results of a search for the Farmhand F10 loader. It seems to have been capable of building and feeding tall haystacks without a beaver slide.
farmhand f10 loader - Google Search

I was thinking that loader was a F1. Would not be my first brain fart. Spent hours on the thing bucking hay. The one I used had an oil tank mounted behind my right shoulder

Talking about this brings back some buried memories. I would push the hay up into mounds and dad used a then modern loader with a grapple fork to place it in the stack frame. I think he used the F10 loader with a longer reach to top the stack.

 

[stuckmotor]

I was thinking that loader was a F1. Would not be my first brain fart. Spent hours on the thing bucking hay. The one I used had an oil tank mounted behind my right shoulder

Don't worry about the brain fart. A zero is nothing among us tractor drivers. My first knowlege that a hay sweep even existed came from a Farmhand brochure that I picked up at my Allis Chalmers dealer's and the F10 looks like the champion of them all.

 

[CliffordK]

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.

 

[stuckmotor]

My neighbor had a stack or two like the ones you saw in Russia, when I was a kid. The poles leaning in from the sides are a new wrinkle for me. I guess they cut the branches off and leave them on to help keep the hay in place. Seems like a good idea.