Back in the middle to late thirties all of the hay was brought to the barn loose. It was transported to the hay mow with the use of harpoon forks that would deliver about five hundred pounds of hay to the mow at a time . A heavy rope was strung f rom the peak of the barn down to the load of hay and up along the peak to the end of the barn then angled off down the roof to the eve and finally to the barn floor where a team of horses could pull the load to the mow.
Sometimes we exchanged help with a neighbor when making hay. This day Mike {a younger brother to Sophie Bar] and I were in the mow. We were both in our late teens. The mow of hay was nearly full and we were working with our heads bumping the bar n roof. A harpoon fork of hay was about to come up and I noticed that Mike was standing in direct line of the angle that the rope was being pulled. I suggested that he should come over to the other side so as to be out of the way if anything happened to t he pulley in the peak. He stepped out of the way and had no sooner done so when the rope and pulley came snapping by in the exact spot that he had been standing. It came with all the force that a rope could bring with a team of horses on one end a nd five hundred pounds of hay on the other . Had he been in the way he would have been very seriously injured by a ten pound pulley coming at you like a sling shot. Over the years the rope that held the pulley to the peak of the barn had become brittle with age and had cut off under the weight. Mike came over to me held out his hand and said "thanks."
Some years when the hay crop was good the barn would be filled so full there was only room to crawl down the peak on your hands and knees. Then the surplus was put on the barn floor. The wing to the east was filled with straw at threshing time.
The extreme east mow was saved for grass hay to be fed to the horses. This mow was usually the last to be filled. One time we were late in completing the hay crop . It was time to start threshing wheat so the neighbors came to help us in the last field . The hay was hardly dry enough before it was taken to the barn. After a few days it became so hot you could hardly stand on it. Many barns have gone up in smoke from spontaneous combustion by putting hay up before it was thoroughly dry.
It always worried me and I was glad when we started using a baler as it deminished the danger.