By Bev Rand
Special to the Pioneer Times
In the days of long ago, there were two boys born, one on a farm that bordered Pleasant Pond, the other on a ridge — Golden Ridge in Sherman. The Pleasant Pond boy graduated from Bowdoin, the Golden Ridge boy from the University of Maine. Charlie, Bowdoin man, retired to Florida and joined a writers’ club without any previous
experience in writing. Bev, the Golden Ridger, read a book written by a school teacher of writing. The first sentence in the book was “if you can talk you can write.” Charlie visited me and read his story about haying in his youth, especially as it came to building a load of loose hay on the horse-drawn hay wagon. “You will be the first and only one that has any idea of what I am writing about,” says Charlie. “None in my writers’ club had any farming experience.”
Since the Bowdoin man’s farm was located around Pleasant Pond, it attracted many of the surrounding youth. A strong back and muscles made up his inexperienced haying crew. They knew not how to pick up a full forkful of hay without leaving scatterings of hay. They did not fully realize the importance of this hay. This is the wintertime food for the livestock that is on the farm. It produces the milk and butter. It is feed for the horses that pull the bobsleds and the single-driving horse sleigh.
These boys were anxious to get to the next bundle of hay and throw it onto the 20-foot hayrack, built especially for hauling loose hay. While Charlie was driving the two, at least in building the load, it was important to build the corners up first. The rest of the hay would bind them on and keep the hay from sliding off on the way to the barn.
On Golden Ridge, haying is essentially the same. The tall grass, clover and timothy mixture is mowed by horse-drawn mowing machine and raked by a one-horse-drawn rake. If there was too much clover we had after raking, we had to bunch the hay and let it cure for a few days since clover took longer to dry out before putting it in the barn.
The help on Golden Ridge was mostly experienced farm hands that had been working on the farm for years. They know how to pitch hay onto the wagon and make it easier for the men that were driving the team and building the hay load. Since I was driving this team this summer and had to hook it onto the hay wagon, it was my job to drive the horses and build the load.
My father was one of the men that liked to pick up the largest bunch of hay he possibly could to throw on the load. In so doing, he made it difficult to separate and distribute onto the load of hay so that it fit. This was a real chore, a real job! But he loved to see how big a forkful of hay he could put onto the load. Our hired men were more sympathetic to my job and helped place the hay as I put it onto the wagon.
Haying time was really a very special time on the farm. It had to come in hot dry weather. A special drink that my mother made for us was what she called ginger tea. As we came into the barn with a load, that ginger tea was truly welcomed and refreshing.
Two farm boys born a few miles apart with somewhat similar but different haying experiences. You might say as different as Bowdoin and the University of Maine.
Neither Charlie or I were experienced writers but the inspiration that we got through retirement caused a little unprofessional writing on both our parts.
