HAY BALER? NO, A HAY PRESS

As I was the only worker at this exhibit with a real straw hat, the Reunion visitors always directed their comments just to me. It seems they told me more about my exhibit than I told them. Different areas have different styles. For a better demonstration we tied the bales on the same side as the crowd and away from the straw pile. Some people said it was backwards, while others said they had always done it our way. Some said the tier also pokes his wires and another merely returns all wires back through while others said one pokes only and one ties only. Either way it still takes two people to get the bale tie wires installed completely. Yes, they still sell bale ties. I researched all summer and found several guaranteed leads before locating a farm store in East St. Louis that handles Red Head Brand wire. I am considering selling wire at next years' Reunion, the main drawback being our late Reunion dates (five days, ending Labor Day). In later years, some hand tie wires were available with a hook and bead on the end similar to the end of a bicycle spoke. These were simply hooked through the eye of the other end of the wire and formed bales all the same length, plus the wires were reusable. All baling wire is reusable for other things, but only the hooked bead wires remained untwisted which allowed easy rebaling with them.

Our baling crew, being different each year, was always able to find someone in the crowd who could tie wires. Different people do it differently. We have tied double wraps, singles, figure eights another time and some that couldn't be named. Several women have stepped forward to show how they had tied bales. Also, I had one very important oversight: it's the code of the Midwest that the long, straight lengths of wire waiting to be tied around the bales must be held handy in an old, used rain spout.

The machine manufacturers let the farmer decide exactly how long to make his bales. Generally, bale length is determined by how long the tie wire is made. Bales only two inches too long can cause the wire to be too short to tie or if tied, can break from too much tension. If baled short, too much extra wire is awkward to handle during the knot tieing. Bales must be kept close to twice as long as wide to conserve storage space and for an interlocked, uniform stack. Farmers devised many gadgets to measure length. Some had a spiked wheel that rolled as the bale lurched past, raising a marker or striking a bell. Others let the tie person yell 'block' when it looked time to him, so the feeder would stop feeding long enough to drop a block. In our own case, a rod was stuck in the bale close to the previous block. As the bale moved along the chute, it carried the rod to a predetermined mark on the chute, at which time a new block was installed. This worked pretty well if someone always remembered to move the rod back forward to each succeeding block.