Paul Whitelock on Hay

It was also an art with picking up the hay out the field on the trailers that had been baled.

Two of you with a pitch fork each, one on each end of the bale, when the load got high, pitching them up high and if you were putting them up too quick, you know it would only take a foot on a bale and knock one off and you very soon slowed down because you realised he was going to knock ’em off if you gave them to him too fast.

And there was an economy of labour in picking those, and it was manual labour and you’d put your pitch fork in at a certain angle in order to be able to bend it over you knee, drive the butt of the pitch fork into the ground and then lift it and then put it up onto the trailer.

It was an art, and if you hadn’t been brought up to it, you could do it but you’d end up working very hard doing it.