Friday, February 27, 2015

Why I Bought a Hay Hook

When we go to Rockaway, we always like to stop in Wheeler, a small town on the Nehalem Bay, and visit the Wheeler Station Antique Mall. This trip was no exception.

We never know what we might end up with.  But I could not have expected to come away with this. 
 This hay hook is a blast from the past.  When I saw it (priced at $4.50) I immediately pictured myself wielding such a hook out in the hay field, where I would drag newly baled hay toward the flat bed hay wagon, pulled by our old tractor. My first experience at driving was that tractor out in the hay field. 

I loved haying season.  I grew up on a small nine acre farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where we raised much of our own food through our vegetable garden, fruit trees, and our animals: milk cows, beef  steers, pigs, and chickens,  Our place was an old farm house with a big old barn. We raised hay on our fields, and also bought hay from neighbor's fields. We would load the hay and bring it to our old barn to be stacked for winter feed for the cattle. 

So what am I going to do with a hay hook? Well, it will join other memorabilia hanging on the back wall of the garage, next to our potting bench.  It will join a grain scoop, hay fork and cowbells from my grandfather's farm up in the hills above the valley, where he had dairy cows. There's also an assortment of old garden tools, some cast offs from my own gardening era.  


I don't expect to be hooking any more hay bales, but I can get hooked on the memories. 

16 comments:

  1. How much fun is that??? My first driving experience was driving the tractor that pulled the rope that brought the bales up into the hay mow. You brought back a memory for me, for sure.

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  2. What interesting things hanging on that wall! I would never have known what it was without you telling me, and to think you knew right away. :-)

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  3. How neat that you grew up on a farm. I would have thought you were always a city girl. I do like that hay hook. I can't resist buying things like that.

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  4. Great addition to your collection and your collection of memories too.

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  5. You have so many interesting collections to go with your interesting life.

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  6. I like your collection of old farm tools . Now your hay hook looks like one that was fashioned by hand. In other words , it wasn't bought at the store and so is unique.

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  7. Nice addition to your collection! Such special memories!

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  8. I love it! That looks fabulous. I used to have a wall of collectibles hanging on my dining room wall in Illinois. It used to be so much fun to go hunting for antique/collectibles.

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  9. As a former farm girl who helped with her share of the summer haying, I understand your need for that hay hook!

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  10. Well, you certainly made a good purchase. I like looking at your collection.

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  11. how fun-it would make quite a weapon...

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  12. Now I will know a hay hook when I see one.
    What great memories. I always envied my friends that lived on farms and loved visiting with them.

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  13. I didn't know that... Love this kind of information..

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  14. Love the old tools. We still use the hay hooks though. Have an identical one.
    MB

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