One of the more memorable events of my early childhood at the Little House has to do with baling peanut hay. Uncle Jody owned and was still living in the house that Daddy and Mamma eventually bought up on the “big road.” Across the big road and southwest of his house was a big field, maybe sixteen or eighteen acres. He planted peanuts there.
When time came to harvest the peanuts, the plants—vines— were pulled from the ground, with the peanuts still attached to the roots. They were then “stacked,” using poles that were upright, with a couple of cross pieces nailed at right angles across the bottom. The peanut plants were placed on the stack, roots and peanuts outward. There the peanuts and the plants dried. After the peanuts dried, they were picked off, and that was the main harvest. But the vines made pretty good hay. Now I may have some of that wrong, you understand. They may have harvested the peanuts, and then stacked the hay.
In those days, the hay baler didn’t run around the field making hay. The baler was placed in the middle of the field. I don’t remember exactly how it was powered—maybe a power take off from a tractor. The vines were manually brought from the stacks to baler, and stuffed into the baler. I think that there was a lot of manual labor in the process of tying the baling wire, etc., but I was only four years old, and was excited to be involved. The square bales, about three or four feed long, and maybe fifteen inches on each side, came out of the end of the baler.
Several men were involved in the process. Some were getting the vines from the stacks, some running the baler, some feeding it into the baler with pitchforks, and some stacking the hay. I don’t remember if they were actually picking the peanuts off the vine at that time or not. I don’t remember who the men were, with one notable exception. Twig Ray was there. Everything went well for me, until I had a call of nature. Since we didn’t have a bathroom at that house, and I was accustomed to going “out of doors,” as the expression went, that was no particular problem. The only problem was choosing the location. Behind the hay stack seemed ideal, and seemed to work well. Seemed to. But then Twig Ray accidentally discovered the site. REALLY accidentally. His words, “Who S— where I was going to step!” are indelibly etched into my memory!
Memorable indeed. Mortifying!
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