The Big Round Bale

The Big Round Bale
“Its all Big Round Bales now,” explained my father proudly, “No need to stack ‘em in the barn. Good as waterproof they are.” He was reacting to my surprise at the sight of an empty barn in December. It wasn’t the empty barn itself that was bothering me. But I couldn’t find the right question. I was missing something. What was wrong with an empty barn ? But it was difficult to concentrate in the deafening noise as the Big Yellow Baling Machine passed by outside the barn, churning out Big Round Bales.
I was back at the farm I’d grown up on. I looked at the neglected haymaking equipment rusting quietly away in the corner. While Dad continued praising the conclusive benefits of the Big Round Bale, I closed my eyes again. Dad’s voice faded away. The distinctive smells and sounds of the barn were amplified and I was immediately overwhelmed by memories -- a collage of forgotten events.
It was haymaking season - the highlight of every diary farmer’s year. It had been this way for generations of hardy pioneering colonists in New Zealand, as it had for their forbears half a globe away for many years before that. The appearance of iron tools, the wheel, and the internal combustion engine had changed the face of the event, and the productivity, but not the need for it. And yet after 10,000 years of tradition and adaptation, this way of life disappeared inside a few short years.
The immense undertaking that was haymaking could only be achieved if all the farmers in the area, and their teenage sons, came together to help. To help turn the fields of cut, drying grass into a neatly stacked barn full of hay to feed the stock throughout the winter months. All would come together at the first farm where the hay was ready to cut. Time to get the hay in! Even in those days where the tractor had already been ubiquitous for half a century, it was still a task requiring a large number of workers. One tractor lifting & turning the hay, followed closely by another pulling the baler. Other tractors with long arms out in front would speed about, scooping in the bales one by one to fill the area within the tractor’s arms in a tetris–like challenge to the driver’s spatial skills. Once filled, the driver finally whisked them over to the base of the elevator, a conveyor belt rising up to the top of the growing stack of hay. Men, and boys keen to be accepted as men, threw bale after bale onto the elevator, or, standing atop the stack, lifted off the endless stream of bales as they arrived, stacking them according to some law passed down from the Egyptian pyramid-builders. The smells of cut grass, drying hay, the blazing midsummer sun, the sweat and grunts of the workers, the noise of the tractors and machines as the farmers raced against the risk of a rainshower that would render the hay useless. As children, we tried to keep out of the way of the sweating workers and the whirling machines. We played in the next field, or explored nearby woods and streams. Wives and mothers appeared at intervals with large smiles, encouragement, and large buckets of lemon barley water to quench dry dusty throats. Baskets of food appeared at lunchtime, and finally, as the sun set, cold bottles of beer were brought out in buckets of iced water. This was the moment the boys found out who had been accepted into the group of “men” – “you want a beer Mike ?” a proud Dad would offer for the first time to a grinning young lad. Beer wasn’t for kids. Probably a token of the social importance of the haymaking season was that it was in the hay paddock that I learnt most of the important things about life– the birds and the bees, the path to manhood, respect for hard work, my first kiss.
Then came the “big round bale”. This was an unlikely breakthrough. Instead of a handy rectangular shape and a handy size that one (strong) man can lift one comfortably, the big round bale was, too big to lift, and, well, too round. Initially we laughed at this crazy idea. We couldn’t see why anyone had thought it would catch on. But inside 3 years, Haymaking was gone.
The big round bale could be baled by a big round baling machine, operated by one man. The size meant that rain could not penetrate beyond the outer layer, so could not be damaged by rain. Which meant there was no longer any rush. The bales could be left where they lay. There was no need for several tractors to scoop up all the bales, or for a team of men to man the elevator and do the stacking. There was no need to ask the neighbours for help to bring in a field of hay. Or for that matter to go and help the neighbours with their field. But the new machinery for Big Round Bales was big and expensive; too expensive for an individual farmer. So contractors appeared. Service providers. Haymaking was now a business. Someone could make an investment in this machinery, then harvest the hay for all the farms in an area. Now even the farmer himself was not involved in the process of haymaking. The cultural and social event that was haymaking has ceased to exist virtually overnight. No young man has come of age atop the haystack. No farmer has heard the jangling bottles of beer in the ice buckets as the last few bales are stacked. No child since then has played or learned about life in the hay paddock. And yet I’ve never heard one farmer even mention this impact of the Big Round bale.
It would be easy to proclaim that the sudden disappearance of probably the most vibrant community occasion of the year for this rural society proves that progress is a curse. But I’m not a Luddite. Haymaking was above all else back-breaking physical labour. But I do find it astonishing that such a significant cultural change can come about almost entirely unrecognised and unremarked by the people so closely affected.
Ceeb