Haying - The Old-Fashioned Way

This is my latest - and last literary effort for the memory quilt.  Comments accepted, but I'm not changing anything unless I spelled something wrong.  ;-)

 From 1949 to 1953, in the little valley of Penrose in northwestern Wyoming, my summers were spent helping Dad and my older brother, Dwight, doing various jobs on the farm. Hay was mowed, and then raked into windrows to dry in the sun. One of my chores was to drive the John Deere tractor with the haywagon and hayloader down the dried windrowed hay. My brother, Dwight stood on the wagon with his pitchfork and arranged the hay on the wagon evenly. (Occasionally, there was a water snake, which he might pitch my way.) When the wagon was full, we headed for the hay yards at Grandfather’s house; here was the large derrick, crafted from poles with the Jackson Fork on the end of a pulley system that would lift the hay from the wagon to the stack. It was the finest derrick I have ever seen made for a Jackson Fork (I have seen various versions of derricks in Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah, but I’ve never seen another as carefully made as this one. Logs were probably brought down from Pryor Mountain to the north, and I suppose that Grandfather and his two oldest sons made the derrick in the early 1900s.)  

  Now, my job was easy, as I watched while Dad climbed onto the full haywagon, Dwight picked up the reins of the team of horses, Pet and Babe, who were hitched to the pulley system for the Jackson Fork; Grandpa, in his 80th year in 1949, would insist on being on top of the hay stack. On command, Dwight would lead the team forward far enough to lift the heavy four-tined Jackson Fork from the ground onto the wagon load of hay.  Dad would push the tines into the hay, and fasten it closed, then give the signal to Dwight to lead the horses forward to lift the hay to the top of the haystack, where Grandfather would direct it with his pitchfork so that Dad could pull the trip rope and drop the hay in place. (Sometimes, we all held our collective breaths as Grandfather eluded the dropping hay.) Then, the team would go forward again, bringing the Jackson Fork up and back to the wagon.  It was a coordinated, cooperative effort between the men, horses, and the pulley system with the big fork. When the wagon was entirely unloaded, and the last hay swept off, the team was ready to be released from their job, and it was my job to lead them to the irrigation ditch for a drink of water. They were much bigger than I was, and I was glad when they finished.