Traipsing Thru Tall Timber: Courting Death as a Montana Logger

By Larry Rubin

Life for most people is a stiff challenge. Seldom indeed are good jobs handed to one on a platter. You typically, train, study, and learn to pursue a path to perfection. When tackling the job of a Montana timber faller, I jumped in with both feet on the first day. This was truly a situation of live and learn as you go. I was blessed beyond belief to make it through each and every week. By keeping my nose to the grindstone and my eyes ever vigilant on my surroundings, I was able to survive countless encounters that were destined to cripple my career. In the end, I am still alive and smiling. Someone is surely watching over me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512749175

Larry Rubin

Living and working in the big wild West, especially as a timber faller in the rugged Montana forests, forces one to learn quickly or perish. The author had little choice but to keep extremely observant so as not to get injured or maimed and thus be able to work another day and provide for his family. Working during sweltering, hot summer days as well as frigid winter days of down to twenty-five degrees below zero brought vivid life to the old adage of “easier said than done.” In spite of his constant vigilance, occasional mishaps were in the making. The author worked for nearly twenty-four years as a Montana timber faller and made it through, alive.

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Copyright © 2016 Larry Rubin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-4918-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-4919-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-4917-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911306

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/08/2016

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 A Home In The West: Colorado

Chapter 2 Life On A Mini-Ranch

Chapter 3 Hunting And Horses

Chapter 4 Pick-Up Trucks And Ranch Life

Chapter 5 A Horseback Ride Into The ‘Flat-Tops’

Chapter 6 Extra Income; Work In Town

Chapter 7 Brother Tom Comes To Live With Us

Chapter 8 Rattlesnakes, Coyotes And Elk Poaching

Chapter 9 The Car Wash Incident

Chapter 10 The Monstrous Move To Montana

Chapter 11 Building A Bit Of Business

Chapter 12 An Awesome Array Of Logging Adventures

Chapter 13 Montana Tid-Bits

Chapter 14 Hunting In The Bob Marshall Wilderness

Chapter 15 Logging Related Oddities

Chapter 16 Capers At Home And Work

Chapter 17 Outdoor Oddities

Chapter 18 Several Assorted Accidents

Chapter 19 Uncommon Outdoor Events

Chapter 20 There Were ‘Funnies’ Too

Chapter 21 Random Odds And Ends

Chapter 22 Family Life Of A Logger

Chapter 23 Hunting In The Bob Marshall Wilderness

Chapter 24 More Family Life And Events.

Chapter 25 Moving To The ‘Big House’

Chapter 26 Mark Gets His 1St Buck Deer

Chapter 27 Emergency : A Logger Is Down

Epilogue

Author’s Note

INTRODUCTION

In the early Spring of 1970, my wife, Kathie and I packed up all our belongings, sold our property in Alaska and moved down to the ‘southern’ 48 states. Brother Bruce was living just north of Denver, Colorado so we moved in with him before eventually renting some nearby property.

A few months later, we moved out to the ‘north-west’ corner of Colorado. We purchased some property there but again, only stayed just shy of 2 years in that area.

Our ‘move’ in the ‘spring’ of 1972 was way up north to the 4th largest state in the ‘union’; Montana. My Mom & Pop helped us make the move and some-how, we settled there in ‘north-west’ Montana for well over 34 years.

Settling down, out in the country, allowed us to have all kinds of ‘farm-animals’ as well as various ‘wild’ critters running around our humble abode. Although, I was far from the ‘Paul Bunyan’ type of guy, I wound up working as a ‘timber-faller’ in the big woods of Montana for nearly 24 years.

Just by its very nature, the work of a timber-faller, going at a near, ‘non-stop pace’ for nearly 7+ hours per day while packing a heavy chain-saw and work-belt with related tools made the work nearly equivalent to 1.4 times as much labor as the average out-door job. Thus, my 24 years in the ‘tall timber’ was more like working 35 years in the average rugged Montana out-doors.

I finally hung-up my ‘chain-saw’ in the mid 1990s. I still couldn’t afford to retire but a several month job with a telephone company and then nearly 2 years on a 5000 acre Montana ranch was a much slower pace than the logging; a very welcome ‘pace’, indeed!

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Majestic Bull Elk in his prime.

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Our new home in Colorado

on the ‘mini-ranch’

November, 1971

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Chapter 1

A HOME IN THE WEST: COLORADO

After visiting with both of our parents for a few weeks, Kathie and I jumped in our pick-up with camper and headed out West. My previous job in Alaska had shut down completely so now we were down in the southern ‘48’ and making our way out to Colorado.

I had contacted my brother Bruce, who lived near Boulder, that we were heading out. He insisted that we stay with him a few weeks, in order to get lined out. After arriving at Bruce’s place, we started looking for work in the area as well as locating a mobile home to rent while we were checking everything out.

In just a few days, I located a farmer in the area that needed some help during harvest. I got on with him for a few weeks but then, his harvest was nearly over so he gave me a tip about a neighbor of his that operated a dairy farm and was needing some help. I agreed to work for the dairy farmer although I warned him that my wife and I were looking for a place in the country to settle down at. He understood but hired me on anyway.

The work there at the dairy was interesting and was comprised of mostly feeding chores as well as helping finish up some of the harvest chores at his farm also. One afternoon, his crew was cutting green silage and dumping it in a long narrow ‘pit’ silo that was simply a pit on the ground.

After dumping loads of the ‘green chop’ in the pit with side-dump trucks, it was my job to drive a heavy old farm tractor with wide rear tires on it, back and forth over the newly dumped silage. Many times as I drove the tractor forward and up onto the top of the pile, the front tires started to lift upward and start the tractor to turn a complete sumersault with me on it. It was a spooky operation and I really had to keep on my toes, to prevent from rolling over backwards.

Another time we had a big rain storm in the area and the crop fields were wet and muddy. The farmer insisted just a day or two later, on harvesting his standing corn crop but the ground was so slippery that the machinery couldn’t manuever.

He put me on a special tractor with big chains on the rear wheels to drive in the paths in front of the other machinery. If I drove ahead first, the other machinery could somehow get a bit more traction to keep moving and complete the harvest.

Eventually, I told the farm owner that Kathie and I wanted to take off one week and check out some properties in western Colorado. He readily gave me permission so in a couple of days, off we went.

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We headed west over to Glenwood Springs, Colorado and viewed a few nice properties. Then we went farther west to Rifle and turned north, up to Meeker. A Realtor there showed us a nice ranchette of 520 acres but it was just slightly out of our price range. From there we went on north up to Craig, Colorado where another realtor showed us several properties.

One property in particular caught our eye. It consisted of 414 acres, had a huge sturdy barn, several out buildings and a little house. The house was quite small and not very fancy at all and thus the price was in our ‘ball-park’. We told them, we would take it.

We hurried back to Boulder and told my brother the good news. He was happy for us but sad that we would soon be leaving his family and his area. I also gave the good news to the dairy farm owner and he was happy for us as he said he didn’t blame anyone who wanted to get some property of their own. About 4 weeks later, we made the big move, out near Craig.

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Kathie’s parents, Bob & Vi Willaman

holding our son, Tim in front yard

of our ‘mini-ranch’, July 1971

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Dosmetic Farm Sheep like I had on our

414 acre ‘mini-ranch’ in Colorado

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Chapter 2

LIFE ON A MINI-RANCH

Brother Bruce helped us move to our ranch home by driving his pick-up with a small horse trailer behind it. We could put all of the items that we had shipped down from Alaska in the trailer while I drove our truck and camper.

We all left on a Saturday morning and arrived by noon. By that evening, we were unloaded and living in our new home. One of the first things I did the following week was to go into Craig, a town then of about 12 thousand people and look for a job.

At the 2nd or 3rd place I checked, I had good news. I could start in a couple of days at working as a carry-out boy at the local Safeway grocery store. Now we would have some immediate ‘pay-checks’ coming in to buy groceries and pay utilities until I could start seeing some income from the ranch.

As soon as we could, we bought some grown chickens that were already laying eggs. I also located two farms in the area that had baby pigs for sale. I bought 1 male from one guy and 2 young sows from a different farmer. It took the ‘wiener’ pigs another 4 to 5 months before they could start to reproduce but eventually, nearly 4 months later, they did. On one day, I had my normal 3 pigs. Two days later, after both sows had ‘farrowed’ their batch of 10 ‘piglets’ each, my total jumped to 23, a more than 7-fold increase in 48 hours.

After several months there on the ranch, I bought an older milk cow that was due to freshen. She gave birth to a new little heifer about 5 weeks after we bought her. I had not previously know how to milk but I sure learned quick. My hands were killing me for the first week but gradually became use to the routine and strengthned quickly. After I got the ‘hang’ of it, (no pun intended), I could fill the 3 ½ gallon milk pail to the brim in about 14 minutes. Kathie gradually learned to make butter and it was unbeatable. (no pun intended).

We would chill the milk in the frig, skim the cream off the top and began to drink more tasty milk than we ever had in our lives before. Kathie would use the cream skimmed off the top to put in a butter churn and would crank the handle for 20 minutes or more before the cream turned to yellow butter.

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When we had lived on the ranch about 5 months, I did some checking and found a sheep rancher that wanted to sell some of his sheep. I went to his ranch where he had a long live-stock truck come and haul the sheep I purchased from him. I bought 145 head of ewes that were due to lamb in about 3 weeks. Since my ranch was divided up into 4 sections, I kept the ewes in the closest pasture to the barn area so that I could keep a closer watch on them.

The weather was starting to get warm by the time the ewes were ready to lamb out. So a few days after I acquired the sheep, I hired a crew to come in to shear the long thick wool off everyone of them. The crew was unbelievably fast and the 5 men completed the 145 head in one day. The selling price of the wool more than covered the expense of the labor so I still had a nice profit after everything was done.

The ewes began lambing about 10 days after we finished the shearing. The entire process took more than 4 weeks and even then we had a couple of late comers. When all the ewes were done lambing, my new lamb crop numbered about 162; not huge like some get but more than double my original number. I ran all the ewes and their new lambs on the 4 different pastures and then sold the lamb crop in the fall. The income from the sale of the lambs more than paid for the price of the ewes with a fair sum left over.

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The young pigs were growing like weeds. When they each averaged about 100 pounds or so, I took them to a live-stock auction down in Rifle. The sale of the ‘oinkers’ brought a nice sum as well.

On my property, there existed 2 areas that were usually kept for growing crops. I couldn’t afford to purchase any machinery yet so I leased the crop land out to the next-door neighbor who had previously cropped the land for the previous owner.

The 2 crop fields totaled about 45 acres which we leased on shares. I would get 1/3rd of the harvest. The neighbor farmer would get 2/3rds of the crop. When the wheat harvest was finished, my share was delivered right to the grain elevator in town and a constant running total of my balance was kept for me.

Any time I needed feed for my herd of growing pigs, I called the grain elevator company, had them use my grain from storage to mix up a ton of pig feed for me. Additionally, I traded the elevator some of my wheat, to pay for the different ingredients in my hog chow. When ready, I would drive in town with my pick-up, load on the 20 bags of pig feed and bring it home to my barn. In essence, the pig feed was nearly free for my herd of hogs.

When the little pigs were about 25 pounds each, they were a ball of fire. They could run like lightening. Brother Bruce was over visiting me one week-end when the little pigs were in the 40 to 50 pound range. For some reason, one of us dared the other to attempt to catch one of the little fellers.

Bruce and I herded 3 or 4 of the frisky porkers into a small 25 foot square corral and the contest was on. Bruce lunged at one first and almost had it tackled. The little porker twisted, turned and kicked in his after burners and there was no way that Bruce could hold on. I tried several times too but all to no avail. The frisky fellas had way to much energy for us to subdue them. We had a huge laugh over it, though.

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Later in the summer, I had some sheep that I was moving through the corrals, one morning. On the one side of the corral was a wooden fence consisting of several horizontal boards. For some unknown reason, one nice ewe decided to run away from the group and she headed for the wooden fence on the side.

When close to the fence, she jumped up and over the sturdy barrier but made one huge mistake. She accidentally stuck her one fore-leg in between the top board and the next one down. As she vaulted over the fence, I could hear a dull ‘snap’ as her leg broke from being stuck in the fence. She fell to the ground but stood back up immediately, holding the broken leg up off of the ground. I was sure she was in severe pain as she attempted to hobble around on just 3 legs. I could have ‘put her down’ but since she appeared to be a good, healthy, maybe above average ewe, I decided to try an experiment.

I looked around and found 2 short lengths of small wooden ‘lath’ boards and cut each of them to about 16 inches long. Then I took some ‘Duct tape’ and wrapped the 2 pieces of lath, one on each side of her broken leg.

I had placed the bottoms of each lath board, to extend about 3/4ths inch below the bottom of her hoof. Since the lath were wrapped very securely across the broken portion of the leg, there was no way that it could move and should heal completely in about 3 weeks or so.

Time flew by, the ewe quickly learned to place her weight on the extended lath boards and the broken leg did indeed mend. When I eventually took the lath off her leg, she ‘babied’ the leg at first but after 4 or 5 more days, began using it like normal. The experiment had worked.

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In the early Spring of 1972, little Tim was nearly 28 months old and was walking around quite well. One afternoon, I took him out with me at the time I was going to milk our cow. I thought I’d show him how to milk her and then take a photo of him milking ‘ol Red’. He had to use both hands on the ‘thing’ but was able to get just a tiny bit of a ‘squirt’ out. At least it was enough to give him a ‘mile wide’ grin. Kathie took a photo of him, trying to do the task.

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The small house on our ranch was nothing more than a small older, ‘Air-stream’ travel trailer that had an extra medium-sized bathroom built onto the side of it, as well as a larger living room extended on to the front end. Since it was still relatively crowded, we decided to add on one full length addition of about 30 feet long and nearly 14 feet out along the entire side of the original unit.

Not only did we make 2 new bedrooms in the new addition, but we enlarged the old bathroom and made provision for a washer and dryer hook-up, as well. Our new addition easily doubled our square footage of living space.

One day, shortly after we were living in the new addition, Kathie hollered at me one afternoon and screamed that something small, about the size of a mouse, flew across the bedroom.

I quickly ran in and we both started searching the ceiling, walls and corners. Suddenly, when we got a bit too close to it, the thing flew again. This time, I had a ‘fly-swatter’ and gave the thing a healthy whack. We looked at it and saw it to be a ‘bat’. About 3 days later, the same scenario repeated its-self again. It only happened those 2 times but it scared Kathie, ‘big-time’. She didn’t like ‘bats-in-the-bedroom’.

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Author on a Quarter horse in Montana

(photo taken in July 2001)

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Chapter 3

HUNTING AND HORSES

Our little ranch had an abundance of oak-brush scattered among the grass and as such, was a magnet for many deer to reside on our land. One early morning, right about day-break, and only 2 days after the hunting season had opened, I left the house and walked up over the brush-covered ridge behind our house. There were about 2 to 3 inches of new snow on the ground so everything, including new deer tracks stood out plainly.

When I reached the ridge top, I walked straight back to my far property line and slowly began looking down along the long fence line toward the bottom of the long slope. After scaning the area for a few minutes, I suddenly saw movement and soon realized that it was a big deer. As I looked at him through my rifle scope, I quickly realized that he was sporting a huge rack. This big fella would be one worth harvesting.

The fine buck was actually across the fence line on the neighbors property but was cautiously walking toward my fence line. When he reached the fence, he stood for only a few seconds and then gracefully jumped up and over the fence, onto my property. The situation was getting better by the moment.

Suddenly, the big boy walked onto my land a few feet, looked all around him and abruptly, laid down on the ground. He was partly hidden by brush but I could still see parts of his body, including most of his head. He was laying mostly side-ways to me so I moved over to a fence post, got a steady aim on him and touched off a round, right behind his front shoulder, where his heart and lungs should be.

At the sound of the shot, he never moved, so I quickly shot again. This time, he stood up but was still partially hidden by the brush. I immediately reloaded and fired a 3rd round. Then he slowly started walking onto my property farther and was soon completely hidden by the thick brush.

Down the fence-line I jogged until I reached the spot where the large stag had crossed the fence-line. I then looked over a few feet to where he had initially bedded down and where I had taken my first 3 shots. There on the ground, was a fair amount of blood. I saw his foot prints and blood spots on the ground so immediately started following his trail.

In deeper to the thick brush I followed. The trail in the fresh snow was like a roadmap. I had my rifle at the ready, in case the big guy was still able to make a rush away into some deeper thickets. I was creeping as silently as I could and kept constantly glancing down at the trail and up-ahead in case he was still on his feet.

Suddenly I spotted him about 35 feet ahead of me. He was walking straight away from me and was bearly able to move. I quickly walked up behind him and observed him. I could hardly believe my eyes. One of his front legs was severed in ½ and just dangling. One rear leg had been hit and was also totally useless to him. He could certainly not run away and I had no idea how he was even able to move.

I quickly walked up close behind him and put him to sleep with a round at the base of his one ear. It was ‘lights out’ immediately. Now, he was permanently mine.

The rack was the largest that I had ever harvested on a deer. His body size was proportional to his ‘rack’. I quickly began to field dress him and when finished, put my ‘tag’ on his horns. Then I made a ‘bee-line’ toward our house to saddle up 2 horses and return to the reclining fella, to take him home.

By far, the most difficult part of getting him home was to get his ‘dead-weight’ carcass up and onto the saddle of my 2nd horse. I first had to drag him uphill a ways till I found a small rise that I could pull him onto. With my spare pony standing beside the slight rise, it was a shorter lift to get the heavy deer body up and across the empty saddle. But I finally made it and carried the tremendous trophy home.

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Another important aspect of the ranch was having horses for various uses. Not only were they very helpful for carrying deer home, they were often used for checking the many acres of our ranch as well as occasional ‘joy’ riding.

Brother Bruce and family drove over one week-end and Bruce and I decided to take our horses for a ride. The old gravel road that ran past our property ran up and over the adjacent ridge and on down to the Williams Fork road, nearly 10 miles away. I had 2 horses there at my place, so we saddled up both ‘ponies’ and started on our way.

Down our driveway we rode, turned up-hill on the main dirt road and plodded somewhat slowly all the 2 miles to the top of the grade. After reaching the top, we continued for maybe another mile before deciding to turn around and start back.

Most all of our riding ‘gait’ was at a relatively easy pace and we were sure the horses were far from ‘tuckered’ out. When we returned back to the top of the ridge-line, we started back down hill again and were now letting both horses have a lot more of ‘free rein’ and they were starting to trot at a moderate pace.

We still had a good 1 and a ½ miles down hill to go before we reached my driveway when Bruce suddenly suggested that we let the horses run. With a few swift ‘heels to the belly’ and allowing them to have ‘free rein’, off they bolted. In a quick couple of seconds, we were nearly flyin. And hangin on for ‘dear life’ too.

Perhaps a veteran ‘cowboy’ could give a ‘technical’ explanation as to why my horse gradually pulled ahead of brother Bruce, but I couldn’t. My horse, who we called, Star, was a fairly ‘long-coupled’ horse and usually could run like the wind. I was quite easily getting way ahead of Bruce.

At one point, as we ran wildly down the dirt road, I turned my head around to glance at my brother. In a heartbeat, I started laughing so hard that I nearly fell out of the saddle. I was probably 30 to 35 feet ahead of Bruce but the hooves of my horse were throwing up small clumps of clay and throwing them forcefully in the air behind me.

Bruce’s horse was running directly behind us and was right in the ‘line of fire’ of the on-slaught of the hard, small clumps of clay. Bruce was getting pelted ‘big-time’ and had to put one arm across his cringing face in a fruitless effort to protect himself. Bruce was getting a beatin and I was nearly fallin off my horse, from laughter.

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On another mini-excursion of riding on my mini-ranch, Bruce and I were riding through an area where there were several taller clumps of ‘sage brush’. I asked Bruce in the most serious manner I could muster, if he had ever tasted the young leaves of the growing sage brush, remarking that they were surprisingly sweet.

He quickly replied that he never had, so quickly reached down as we were riding along, and grabbed a small handful of the grayish-green leaves. Then he proceeded to pop them in his mouth and began to rapidly munch on them.

He suddenly began to forcefully spew everything out of his mouth while making an absolutely terrible face. His next words directed at me were not real nice. I again nearly fell out of the saddle. I don’t recall how many days it actually took, to get that putrid taste out of his mouth. He didn’t think it was a bit funny. --I disagreed.

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Eventually, Bruce brought over a horse that he had acquired and left it at my place so that he wouldn’t have to transport one back and forth every time he came over. The one horse that he brought was a fairly good riding pony but it didn’t like being fenced in the somewhat smaller corrals that I had.

One part of my corral had a long stretch of barbed wire for a portion of the boundary. When I came outside one morning, I looked at the horses and noticed that Bruce’s horse had attempted to jump or step through the barbed wire fence and had somehow put both front feet in between the top strand and the next strand down.

Realizing that it was trapped, the horse proceeded to step both left and right in an effort to free itself. The resulting deep goughes that the barbs made into the top of both legs were fairly deep. The obvious damage made me realize that the situation was very serious. I thought I’d better call the ‘vet’ immediately.

It was nearly 30 minutes before the vet arrived. I had the pony tied to a sturdy corral fence when he arrived so he proceeded to look over the wounds and gave me the verdict.

The vet stated that these wounds were not all that bad; that he had seen some a lot worse than these. The cuts were of a nature that should heal up quite well. The Vet. treated the wounds with some thick salve. He also mentioned that there would be some very visable scars but the horse would eventually, be nearly as good as new.

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Beautiful Mule Deer Buck, similar to some residing on & around our ranch.

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Chapter 4

PICK-UP TRUCKS AND RANCH LIFE

After Kathie and I had moved on to our mini-ranch, we soon realized that our 2-wheeled drive pick-up we had with the camper would not be able to get around very well in the winter time. Not only did our driveway have a fairly steep incline to it but almost always, there would be places on a ranch that a 4-wheel drive pick-up would be nearly mandatory. We would have to put our GMC pick-up and camper, up for sale and quickly locate a used ‘4 by 4’ truck.

After about 3 weeks of advertising it, someone came out to our ranch, looked over our truck with the camper on it and decided to buy it. Right at the time I sold it to them, I had the new owner give me a ride downtown to a used car dealer where I had previously spotted a used 4-wheel drive p/u for sale.

After several minutes of looking and asking questions concerning several used trucks at the car lot, I purchased an older Ford 4 X 4 pick-up that I thought would get us around on the ranch, especially during the slippery winter months. Once I got it home, I built some side-boards on it so that I could carry livestock in the back of it.

Brother Bruce came over a couple of weeks after I had purchased my 4 X 4 p/u and somehow, we got into a debate about which p/u would go better in the deep snow. My 30 acre wheat field had been harvested a couple of months ago and was now covered with a full 20 inches of snow. We both drove our pick-ups down my driveway, into the adjacent wheat field and the contest was on.

Bruce was driving his stick-shift, 68, ½ ton Chevy which had a V-8 engine. My rig was a 66, ½ ton Ford with a straight-6 cylinder engine. The field was ideal as it had a slight up-hill slope to it, making the contest more realistic, rather than just a race through the flat snow.

Both Bruce and I ran nearly the full length of the long snow-covered field until we both simply could go no father. Bruce traveled as far as he could go until he simply ‘spun-out’ and was finished. He traveled the length of the field a bunch quicker than I but I eventually caught up to him and even spun on past him about 40 to 50 feet farther. We concluded that my rig might have had a touch more traction due to the additional weight of the several boards of the ‘home-made’ live-stock pen built on the bed of my rig.

Both Bruce and I cavorted around the field in our pick-ups for nearly 15 minutes before declaring the contest a near ‘toss-up’ with barely any discernable differences or advantages. The only big conclusion that I made was that I would have been ‘dead-in-the-water’ with my old 2-wheel drive pick-up, especially, in snow or ice. The 4-wheel drive was a ‘go-getter’.

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While living and working around Craig, Colorado, I somehow happened to meet a gentleman by the name of Ray Burgess. Ray and his wife lived at the very end of a county road that ran up to their 160 acre homestead. Their remote property could not have been any more secluded if they had tried. A couple of times, Ray had needed some help during his ‘haying’ season so, after asking if I would be able to help at all, Kathie and I drove up to give him a hand.

Ray usually tried to save a bit of money by using older machinery and equipment, instead of buying newer things all the time. When cutting his hay fields, ray used an old, pull behind, ‘sickle-bar’ mower. When the hay was properly cured in a few days, he would use a pull-behind ‘dump-rake’ to gather the cut hay into long ‘wind-rows’. Ray never baled his cured hay with a modern, mechanical, hay-baler. He used a 14 foot wide ‘fork’ assembly with close-spaced teeth on it that were nearly 6 feet long each. The wide fork was mounted on an older tractor. He would drive into the end of each wind-row, pick up a load from the long line of hay and when the wide set of forks was full, he would drive it over to a tall, old-time contraption called a ‘beaver-slide’.

Ray would dump his fork full of cured hay onto a forked lift assembly, sitting at the side of the tall beaver-slide, then go over to his waiting old 4-wheel drive Jeep and drive the Jeep ahead about 30 feet. When driving the Jeep ahead, it would pull the load of hay with an attached cable, up a slightly sloped ramp until it reached the top and automatically dump the load of hay into a single pile below.

My job was to stand on the side of the freshly dumped pile of hay at the bottom and then use a long-handled pitch fork to spread most of the freshly dumped hay out to all 4 corners in a large square pattern. If I kept the pile flattened out, especially to the 4 corners, the dumped hay would not fall off the rising pile and would gradually grow in height until it nearly reached the top of the sedentary beaver-slide.

When we finally had the stack piled high enough, we neatly rounded the top of the hay stack and it would ‘naturally’ shed water. Hay piles that were not neatly piled and rounded on the top would not shed the periodic rains and would start to incur severe rotting down inside several feet.

Ray confessed one day that a few weeks earlier, when he had been driving his old tractor with the wide