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.