These days most hay bales are not the "one-man lift" size (50-75 lbs) of yore.
Sometimes we see rectangular bales that are 40 times that size and weigh-in at a ton.
More often today we see round bales which weigh near a 1000 lbs.
These bales are most often tied with a plastic net wrap.
As we approached Jackson, MT, we started seeing house-sized hay stacks.
Pretty unusual.
How are these made, we wondered.
They are so tall - almost 30; high - and why?
We also saw some strange wooden contraptions in the fields near these hay stacks.
Now we really want to know what is going on .
Perhaps this is an Amish community that chooses not to use mechanized farm machinery?
We stopped at a visitor center and found out the skinny.
This wooden contraption was invented by farmers in Jackson in 1910 and named for Beaverhead County: the Beaverslide stacker. This stacker has 3 components: wooden inclined slide, poles twice as long as the slide with pulleys and cables, and a wooden hay fork. The hay is gathered and piled on the fork, a horse or (tractor PTO) ties to the pulleys and pulls, lifting the hay fork to the top of the poles and the hay tips onto the stack. Farmhands stay on top the stack as it's being built, leveling out and tramping down the hay. This stack of hay will be able to stay usable even after not being covered through a Montana winter. The Beaverslide stacker was never made commercially.
