Small Square Bales

As my brother, Roger, and I hooked the little tractor up to the small square baler, I could feel my chest tighten and my palms sweat.

Getting the baler ready for haying season is like creeping through a dark, dank cave full of bats flying overhead and slimy urchins in sulfur-smelling pools.

One never knows when the monster will jump out from behind a mysterious corner.

We stepped into that cave when we greased the moving parts and aired up the tires.

Then came the mysterious corner.

Roger turned on the PTO.

All of the movable parts actually moved.

Roger drove the tractor and baler to the hay field while I followed in the pickup.

And thought about the first time I put up hay.

I was working at a convenience store in Baker, Nevada, when a rancher walked in. I told him I would love to help on a ranch. The skeptical look on his face told me to not wait by the phone.

A few days later, the phone rang.

Ladd said he had been team roping when his horse flipped over in the box. He could feel broken ribs poking into his skin and his hay was ready.

I knew nothing about swathers, balers or hay.

Ladd rode one round of the field with me on the swather, holding his ribs and grimacing the entire time.

Thirty minutes later, I noticed the reel wasn’t turning. When I looked, about 50 yards of flat, uncut alfalfa lay behind me.

Ladd grimaced again when he saw what I had done – or not done, actually.

We unclogged the header while he refrained from yelling at his pathetic help.

A couple of days later, we hooked up the rusty, wire-tie, small square baler.

Ladd’s squinting eyes and thin, pressed lips worried me.

My intuition was right.

By then, I knew enough to watch the hay as it fed into the baler.

I didn’t know what to do about all of those beautiful rectangles laying in the field without wire around them.

And I didn’t know how to fix the knotter.

Neither did Ladd.

In fact, I don’t think anyone actually understands how a knotter works.

By then, he couldn’t hold his frustration in. I learned English as a second language. Since then, I’ve heard the same language spoken in corrals across the West.

Tears streamed down my guilt-ridden face as I pulled the baler to the shop. Other fields were filled with beautiful straight rows of cubes. Ladd’s hay was drying out and losing leaves. What was I doing wrong?

I felt better when Ladd offered some context.

“Figure haying will take three times as long as you think it should take because you will be putting up hay for a third of the time and broke down for two-thirds,” he said.

Then we both peered into the baler.

We twisted knobs and tapped on needles.

We loosened screws and tightened them again.

I walked behind the baler, with no idea what I was watching for, while Ladd baled.

Then he walked behind while I baled.

He held his ribs and I held my breath.

By the time I finished baling Ladd’s field, he had healed enough to operate the bale wagon.

By the time I worked there for seven years, I could run the swather.

The baler still gave us fits.

But Roger has my baler humming along, clunking in a rhythmic beat that is music to his ears.

I meet him in the field at dawn, fuel the tractor and air up the tires, then he bales away while I admire those long, straight rows of cubes.

I don’t know how he does it, but I’m good with it.