{"id":18362,"date":"2022-07-27T00:34:11","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T00:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=18362"},"modified":"2022-07-26T19:35:12","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T19:35:12","slug":"the-hayin-crew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/27\/the-hayin-crew\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hayin\u2019 Crew"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Bryce Angell – The outdoors has always been a large part of my life. My father was an outfitter and guide for 35 years and I was there to shoe and care for the horses and help him do the cooking. We took many great trips into the Yellowstone area. Even now that I\u2019m older, we still ride into the Tetons, Yellowstone and surrounding areas. My poems are mostly of personal experience. I am now retired and enjoying life to the fullest. I plan to do more riding and writing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve listened to my father tell of how they put up hay. They stacked it loose, then tromped it down. That was the only way.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cWe had a hayin\u2019 crew of ten to twelve good men. Those country boys weren\u2019t scared of work. That\u2019s all they knew back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crew would claim the bunkhouse, where the bunks were stacked to three. If you didn\u2019t snore your chance of sleep was zero guaranteed.<\/p>\n

The men would get an early start, but first came ham and eggs. \u201cThey ate a lot,\u201d my father said. \u201cThey all had hollow legs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each morning grandma cooked.\u00a0 <\/span>She\u2019d fry three dozen eggs or so. She said, \u201cA hearty breakfast keeps a body on the go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work was nothing new to them, and now it\u2019s never seen. They worked so well together like a finely tuned machine.<\/p>\n

Someone was always kidding \u2018cuz they loved to joke around. But they knew how far to push it. Might get pounded in the ground.<\/p>\n

At twelve o\u2019clock the workers stopped to rest and get renewed. The horses ate their bags of oats. The men wolfed down their food.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d take an hour, then back to work, right up to suppertime, then line up at the water trough to wash off dirt and grime.<\/p>\n

There were no skimpy appetites. Those men sure loved to eat. At night the cook outdid himself, with chunks of beefy meat.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d head back to the bunkhouse. Some played checkers up till dark. But most of them were sound asleep before night made its mark.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just about the hay. \u2018Twas camaraderie. But those hayin\u2019 days have changed, I\u2019d say, from pure necessity.<\/p>\n

And now I look out in the fields and watch a farmer hay. So much is automated.\u00a0 <\/span>They say we\u2019ve come a long, long way.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll climb down off his tractor, take a gaze out on the crop. And thinks about those men who\u2019d work so hard they\u2019d nearly drop.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll even start to wonder, thinking \u2018bout those days of old, when men would rather work than play. He says, \u201cI guess God broke the mold.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll bet he\u2019ll tell a story, when his hayin\u2019 days are through, of how he put the hay up with his danged near one-man crew.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/span>\u2013 Bryce Angell<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve listened to my father tell of how they put up hay. They stacked it loose, then tromped it down. That was the only way. He said, \u201cWe had a hayin\u2019 crew of ten to twelve good men. Those country boys weren\u2019t scared of work. That\u2019s all they knew back then.\u201d The crew would claim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-cowboy-poetry","7":"category-commentary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18363,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18362\/revisions\/18363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}