Once upon a time, we used to be able to put hay up without having to touch it. Yep, the amazing hay wagon that would pick up 6 tons of bales straight from the field, bring the load into our hay barn and mechanically stack it into a vertical wall of bales. Here in New Hampshire, we still have a little mechanical help, but we're back to stacking the bales by hand. Today Alayne and I unloaded a 24' long (7.4 m) trailer of hay we'd bought from a neighbor. It was 93° outside (34° C) and a lot hotter upstairs in the hay loft! The mechanical help is the hay elevator you see in the photo; it carries the bale up a moving chain and dumps the bale off the end at the top. That's Alayne in the loft grabbing the bale. We took turns between being up in the loft stacking and down below feeding the hay elevator, the latter being a lot easier and cooler!
One thing that made this easier is that the bales we bought are only about 30 to 40 pounds (13 to 18 kg), versus the 70 pound bales we're used to lifting in Montana. We still can't get over how light they are!
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