Labor Day was created by Unions to
recognize the American Worker. It did not include ranching and farming;
if they did, it would destroy the ability of a farmer to get a loan. If a
farmer included the cost of his daily labor on a financial statement,
no banker could find a way to show a profit. But things have changed.
'Haying' used to be a full time job for teens in the summer. Tossing
bales onto a flat-bed, stacking them on the truck, hauling them back to
the hay yard or the barn, throwing bales off and restacking them. It was
always hot, sticky, scratchy, sweaty and hard. But if you were on the
football team in high school you'd finish the last cutting with money in
the bank and muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger! Oh, and the suntan was
free.
Fast forward to today.
Teenagers in farm communities now have to go to the gym all summer to
get in shape. Because one farmer with a round baler, a self-propelled
inline bale wrapper, and a tractor with a bale spear can do the work of
full teenage hayin' crew in half the time. One of the most
labor-intensive chores on the ranch is building fence. I worked for a
big outfit that had several large ranches with miles of fence. We had a
four-man crew. They would set the corners and the brace posts with
posthole diggers and tamping bars. The roll of barbwire would be strung
out, carried by two men often walking for miles when the country was too
rough to drive along the fence line. Then the wire was stretched and
the steel posts were driven in the ground with 15-pound post pounder
every 20 or so feet. Stays and clips were spun on to finish. Sometimes
they could do a mile a day.
Today we
have a tractor with a posthole digger on the three-point hitch and a
post pounder (or pusher in places where it rains). For those who still
want to "rough it" there is the hand-held hydraulic post driver.
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