If one boy can

Dave's Grandpa Greene used to say "one boy can do half a man's work, but two boys, working together can only do a quarter of a man's work."

Last week we called a young friend who wanted to help with baling. We asked him to bring a couple of boys. He showed up with four friends. They all came in the same car and all were eager to earn some money, so we hired them all, but we kept thinking 'if two boys working together do a quarter of a man's work, what happens with five boys working together?'

The first thing we teach them is how to move the bales from the wagon onto the bale elevator. If they lay the bale on straight, it travels up the elevator and into the hay mow without falling off or getting hung up in the narrow doorway to the mow.  Some years more bales end up on the ground than in the mow. Next  we teach them how to stack the bales in the mow. The bottom bales lay on their sides so the twines don't rot, all running north and south. The next layer, stacked on their bottoms, run east and west and the next layer north and south continuing in that pattern until the barn is full. It seems like such a simple pattern, but if one person starts to stack the bales wrong, everyone who follows him carries on the mistake. It wouldn't be so bad, but a stack ten bales high and two bales wide can be very unstable if it has no cross ties to connect it to the rest of the pile. Some years, we've spent as much time rearranging the hay as stacking it.

This year, with these boys, after a few reminders, the barn is in perfect shape. we had a freshman, several sophomores and eleventh graders and a new graduate. They paid attention and learned the patterns. They worked together, solved problems together and chattered the entire time in Somali. They watched Dave and I keep working when we got hot and tired and they did the same. They watched us throw bales and took pride in learning the technique. At the end of our week of work, Dave and I baled a wagon-load on our own while they filled the barn on their own; they were 100% successful.

Baling hay was a real pleasure this year, because of our crew of five boys.  Even if one boy can only do half a man's (or woman's) work, these five boys can do the job.