Jan. 10, 2012

Hauling Hay for Harold at 6 am alone

We had a very good neighbor and friend named Harold Spencer. He came form the Mormon colonies in Mexico and went to work for Brother Rasmussen our neighbor. Our neighbor had a pretty daughter named Carolyn that he fell in love with and married. They then moved into the home next to ours in Duchesne. (By next I mean about a half mile away toward town.)

Harold and my family worked together a lot doing the farms. Harold would do hay with us and we would do it with him. I grew up basically helping him every summer. We would often do chores for each other as well when someone needed to go out of town or for some reason wouldn’t be home to milk the cows.

One summer when I was about 16 or 17 we had decided to haul the hay off one of Harold’s fields at 6 AM one morning. There were some of the other boys from town that were also going to come help. I got up early and milked the cows so I could get the tractor and wagon over to Harold’s place before everyone started to arrive. When I got over there I couldn’t find anyone so I just headed out into the filed with the tractor and started to load the hay. Probably an hour and a half later later I had a full load of hay on the wagon. It took longer because I would have to drive the tractor to the next set of bales, stop and get off and put the hay on the wagon, get on the wagon and stack the hay, and then get off and move the tractor forward to another set of bales. Due to that process I would also carry the bales further than normal since I didn’t want to move the tractor as often. Then as the wagon was nearly full getting the hay up on to the second and third layers of the hay on the wagon also took a little longer and I would often have to get up after each couple of bales to move them into place so I could get room to load the next couple of bales. I was getting pretty tired but finally had the bales loaded and about a quarter of the field of hay loaded onto the wagon. I got on the tractor and headed back to the yard when the others finally started to arrive. They told me that they thought that they were early and were not suppose to be there until 8AM. Well I don’t know who was right or wrong but at least I had some help which I was beginning to fear might not happen.