Poor Man's Hay Elevator

I am so annoyed with blogger. If I didn't have three full years invested here, I would probably quit. It won't let me upload a video, which it used to do. I can't create links anymore; photos show up only as strings of text. Anyway. In lieu of a video, here is a photo of Homero using our new pulley system to get hay into the hayloft.


Our hayloft isn't very high off the ground - about 9 feet - nor very big - it only holds about thirty bales of hay - but it's still very hard to get the hay up there. In the past, Homero just threw the hay up there, but his back isn't quite what it used to be, and these particular bales are very heavy. So we needed a new option. This is what we came up with. Still pretty hard work (look at the sweat rolling down Homero's face) but at least possible.

Now we have hay for the winter. In addition to the thirty bales in the loft, there are seventy bales in the mama barn. In order to get that many in there we had to remove everything else, including the milking stand. So now I am milking in the open air, but I don't mind. It's actually nicer - the mama barn gets extremely hot in the summertime.