There was a lot of truth to the old saying that you must “make hay while the sun shines.”

The beginning of summer was a critical time for dairy farmers and owners of other livestock that needed to be fed through a long winter. The haying season is short in Maine, and a hot sunny day meant hard work in the fields, not a day at the beach.

It was late June 1940 when Samuel Bailey, manager of the Irish farm at Young’s Corner, Auburn, was described by a reporter for the Lewiston Journal Illustrated Magazine Section to be “about as pleased as any farmer hereabout.”

The article said Bailey stood smiling in the barn door as rain came down.

“He had good reason to be pleased. He had three tons of fine clover hay, as good hay as ever grew, under the shingles in the Irish barn, most of it going in that day.”

The story described an increasing mechanization of haymaking in 1940. It recalled a history of Greene that said it was the custom of ancient farmers in that town to arise early, “sacrificing their hot beds to get out in the cool and dewy morning, shoulder their scythes and upon arrival at the hayfield, start mowing by hand. They mowed acres before breakfast.”

Mowing was just the start of the process. The hay had to be raked and turned to let the sun dry it quickly. Then it had to be loaded onto horse-drawn wagons for the trip to the barn.

Later came the mowing machine and rakes pulled by horses. An apparatus called a side-wheel rake put the grass in neat rows. A kick rake cleaned the fields and dropped the accumulated grass for loading. The farmer still started early in the morning because the grass would cut better at that time of day.

I have many boyhood memories of work in the hayfields on our old Auburn farm. The methods ranged all the way from use of scythes by my father and grandfather, to machinery towed behind trucks and tractors.

You never forget the itch of hay chaff down your sweaty neck from throwing hay on a pitchfork over your head to the load. There were welcome breaks in the hot work for a drink of “switchel,” which was a cold concoction of molasses and ginger.

If billowing thunderhead clouds appeared in the sky, it was a race to get as much dry hay to the barn before a downpour would require a repeat of the turning and drying.

“Building” a load of hay on wagon or truck was a special skill, whether the hay was picked up by hand or by a hay loader, which was a great advance in mechanization.

As the hay came off the loader it was immediately grabbed on the three-tined pitchfork of the man assigned to that key job. He knew where to place it so it would attach neatly on the hooks of the hay fork in the barn.

Our barn is still rigged with such a hay fork that lifted massive loads of hay to the barn’s peak and moved it to an appropriate haymow where a tug on a trip rope released the hay. It was the same setup used over the years, but the horse that once pulled the rope hoisting the hay was replaced by a tractor.

I was probably 10 years old when I was drafted for the task of driving our John Deere tricycle-model tractor from the back door about 100 feet across the barnyard, and then backing it down for the next hoist of hay.

Among the other changes in haying I remember is the baler. The early ones were complicated machines prone to break down, but the ease of loading and storing blocks of hay bound by baling twine was a welcome improvement. Conveyors moved the bales to the haymows, replacing the loose hay moved by the big fork.

Today, changes keep coming. Bales can now be big round rolls that are sometimes wrapped in white plastic.

The fields yield several crops a season, and it’s often chopped and blown into wagons. Fewer dairy farmers mean fewer large hayfields, but ways of working the agricultural land keep evolving.

No more rushing to beat the sunset. Just the other night, I watched our neighbor cutting and loading new-cut grass with the assistance of bright headlights on his tractor.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to [email protected].