One Horse Haying
by Ken Gies of Fort Plain, NY
I dedicate this article to TOM KEAGAN, who, in a few short words, spurred me on. I wish I could have known him longer.
The greatest challenge I have faced while developing a functional one-horse farm has been haying. It has taken some time to design a good shaft cart, cut down a mower to four feet, learn to dumprake, and build SOMETHING to haul the hay to the barn. I started with a TRUE TEMPER “hayloader” and a Ford pickup hood “hay slip.” This was great for the first half acre. However, I was worried about finishing the next seven acres before it finished me. Next, I tried roping the hay. Even with a willing horse, I could not rope up a jag. I finished that first year having the hay round baled. King, my horse, hauled the bales to the barn on the pickup hood hayslip.
That winter I began researching buckrake designs. I picked the brains of a few old-timers, read old timey agriculture picture books, flipped restlessly through my SFJ’s and even found a buckrake on a New Holland parts computer program! I came up with three possible designs: 1. PUSH TYPE, 2. PULL TYPE, 3. SIDE HITCH.
The push type buckrake was clearly beyond both my horse’s and my abilities.
I tried a pull type but it worked like a tumble home rake. The side hitch rake was, well, too much side draft. King’s ears crossed and his tail whistled back and forth in aggravation. I parked the thing alongside the fence and hooked up the dumprake…
For short distances, (less than 500 feet) piling up bunches of hay with the dumprake worked fine. I would collect and dump a haycock, then hold the teeth up and swing around a short distance later to collect and then grab the first bunch. I filled my 16’ by 24’ by 10’ high barn with loose hay this way – dragging hairy dump-rake loads to the back door of the barn, dropping and forking it in. It was fun, but not fast.
Somewhere along the way I bought Haying with Horses by THAT GUY…. It proved indispensable for bathroom think time, mower tune up (very nice part of the book) and I read about buckrakes over and over.
One day I hauled the buckrake up to the shop and stared at it for a while. Finally, in despair, I grabbed my hacksaw and started to cut off the side hitch tongue intending to scrap the whole thing. Suddenly, I had a brain bypass! (The only stroke of genius I’ve ever had was marrying the right girl – and that wasn’t my doing.)
I moved to the end of the tongue and cut off the curve. I temporarily hooked a chain to my hitch cart and ran down to the field to try “one last time.” Something was seriously wrong! It was almost working! A few hours later I had a working one-horse buckrake!
Now I can offer the plans of something I built that works! The frame is nothing more than an old mobile home axle. It is about 8’ wide. I used 8’ long 2” pipes for the tongue spaced 15” apart and welded together at the hitchplate in a Vee.
Not being a carpenter, I consider the basket my personal major wood building triumph. It is built of good grade 2”x4”x8’ boards for the tines and cross pieces. I used a 2”x8”x8’ for the end cap which adds a great deal of strength to the lift lever. I used galvanized deck screws (3 ½”) throughout so it is easy to replace any broken parts. The backstop is my own arbitrary design that includes the operator conveniences – a seat and a hook for the water jug. The rear left “platform” is built from a 3”x10”x5’ scrap board. I added a leaning board since balance is not my strong point.
The loading technique is a hybridization of Lynn (THAT GUY AGAIN) Miller’s instructions for buckraking found in Haying with Horses. I must stress that the hay be raked the same afternoon it is buckraked. If the hay sits in the windrow, it seems to settle into the stubble and load poorly. I bunch hay until the tines start to ride up on the hay. Then I back up a little, ease forward under the hay and bunch some more. I usually do this three or four times and then top off the load with my favorite long-handled 3-point pitchfork. Then I stand on the back of the lift lever and ride to the barn. I drop the tines, back up, and then swing hard to the left to clear the bunch. While King rests, I hand-load my little barn.
I believe that one person with one good-sized horse (King is approximately 1600 lbs., 23” collar, 18 years old) that likes or at least isn’t afraid to sit on the britchen when backing can do about five acres without too much trouble.
My #7 mower is cut down to 4 feet. I tried shafts but found that the side draft was excessive and wore King’s left-side hair off. The hitch cart absorbs that force, both on the mower and the buckrake. I mow about two hours at a time and rarely cut more than an acre in that time. Maybe a bitty pony mower would draw lighter and boost productivity.
I use a five-wheel Farmhand rake. I set the wheels with about “two fingers” worth of ground pressure. (10-15 lbs.) This picks up most of the hay without a lot of draft. I can rake what I mow in less than half the time of mowing. Buckraking takes about as long as mowing the same area.
Even though it has taken me three years to pull together a workable one-horse haying system, it has been worth it. Looking out at my row of haying equipment or admiring my barn full of loose hay stirs a sense of deep satisfaction, and that is beyond price.
