Mostly he did this on his own, but us kids (his son Graham and I) sometimes got roped in to help.
When the grass was dry enough - on the 3rd or 4th day - he would use the buck rake to pull the fluffed up hay into windrows. I spent a fair bit of time doing this. The big hooked tines would gather up the hay as the horse went along.
When the tines were full you jumped on a pedal that engaged a pin with an internal cog on the wheel hub.
This lifted the rake and released the load. The idea of this was to form big windrows across the paddock. It took a while to learn when to trip the load so as to make neat windrows. That done, the horse was let out of the shafts and hitched by long chains to the front of the hay sweep.
Starting at the far end of a windrow the hay was gathered up in a huge pile and brought down to the haybaler. The handlebars of the sweep were lifted here which made the tines dig in and the whole sweep tipped upside down dumping the load. We weren't strong enough to tip it over. We often used it but Bay always dumped it. I loved working with the big draught horses.
The buck rake was used for final clean up, bringing the gatherings right up to the press. Bay hand fed all the hay with his fork, timing the action to miss the tamper.
Another old guy, Eric Rowan, tied the wire that kept the bales together. The bales, pushed out in jerks, were stacked there or loaded straight onto a truck. When handling the bales you had to be careful not to cut yourself on the wire knot tails. Made us kids strong. It was always a hot job out in the sun and we looked forward to billy tea and sometimes hot scones brought along by the farmer's wife.
Bay Titter had a Fargo truck which he used to pull the four wheeled hay press and cart the sweep coils of baling wire and the two turntables for the coiled wire and the bale spacer blocks.
I will attempt to describe how these old presses worked.
On the top of the machine near one end was a shallow sided hopper to accept the fork full of hay. Above this hopper - and always looking to me like a horse's head - was a plunger that pushed the hay down into the machine while the press plate was withdrawn. As the tamper came up the press plate squeezed the hay through into the bale shape guides.
These actions were linked to two big geared wheels powered by an old Anderson engine (single cylinder). The man feeding the press has to keep in time lest the machine should gobble up the fork.
When the spacer block came out of the enclosed part of the press and reached a painted mark on side of the bale guides, a new spacer was dropped into the hopper thus making each bale the same length.
The wooden blocks had grooves in them so that the tie wires could be poked through. When the next block came out of the press the wires were passed back through the grooves and knotted.
At the exit end of the press, two adjusting bolts squeezed the tip of the bale guides down keeping the bale compressed while the knotting was done. There seemed to be just enough time before the bale fell out of the machine.
Anybody looking on or free was conned into stacking or loading these prickly things.
One bale was always left in the machine as it needed more hay to push it out.
The wire used was black and very soft. The knot tier always sat on a bale of hay.
Sometimes Dad's Chev runabout was used to cart the hay to the hayshed. It was great fun riding on top of the load to the shed.
Don Bullock has lived in Wanganui all his life and shares his memories of his childhood as penned for family.
