Located in the northwestern corner of what is commonly referred to as “Buffalo Commons,” New Rockford, ND serves as the center of the bison (aka ‘American buffalo) processing industry in America.

And I was there, overlooking the kill floor from my desk for one whole summer.

Well, actually, only five days a week from eight in the morning until five at night, then the rest of the time was mine.  Or rather, for my second weekend job.

That first week in the office, the CEO of the company casually asked me what I had going on over the weekends.  Telling him a quick list of things on my to do list for the summer (weddings, a few weekends home), he asked if I thought I could work on his ranch on the weekends.

For a guy driving an old Pontiac Le Mons (whose heater wouldn’t shut off…or when he did, the car would overheat…which leads me to ask, Le Mons, or lemons….) and trying to pay his way through university, extra money always perked my ears up.

Any free weekend, I was more than welcome to make the trek seventy miles to the north and work on the ranch, just north of Leeds.  The jobs would vary, but for a farm kid living in a big city like New Rockford (population 1,400), any chance to make it out of the city and back onto a farm was a good one.

The pay was better than the office job too!

But this wasn’t just any ranch, this was a bison ranch.  On the rolling lands of central North Dakota, in an era of depressed wheat prices, what better way to make a marginal farm pay for itself then through a specialty product like bison.  It tasted better then beef, was healthier, and people paid a lot more money.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. On the one hand, I knew that most ranches, the work was pretty ordinary farm stuff, things that I had grown up with.  Making hay, fixing fences, feeding the cattle in the yards, and occasionally working cattle.

On a bison ranch, I didn’t know quite what to expect.  How do you rope a bison?  What type of a fence would you need?  What type of hay do they eat?  What do you feed them?  How in the heck would you work them?

The first Saturday, I showed up in my farm gear - jeans, pocket-tee, leather belt, and my steel toed work boots about 7:30am, getting geared up for the 8:00am start.

The boss, my weekday bosses partner showed up about 8:15am, moving pretty slow.

“Is it just us two today?” I asked.

“Naw, the rest will be along in a bit.” He said.

Sure enough, about 9am, the group of high school and college students came rolling in, not all too excited to start work on a nice Saturday…when they could be sleeping off the Friday night…

But start work we did.  Like back home, we were going to make fence.  But not exactly like back home.

Walking back to where we were going to build a corral, I was met by a stack of hacked off telephone poles, one inch solid steel sucker rod, and pails of metal clips.

One thing was very obvious, bison required a little sturdier fence then cattle.  My experience of setting fence posts (though never this deep) and putting up rails (though never of solid steel) came in pretty handy that weekend as we slowly bolted, screwed, and manhandled the corral into being.

 My mother was a Mason.  Not a stone cutter or brick layer, she was a Mason by birth.  My grandfather was Walter Mason, and she was his oldest daughter.

But like any good Mason, my grandfather built things, and in this case, it was a big family.  My mother was the second child, the oldest daughter out of a brood that would grow to ten, count them ten, children.

Like any family, there are stories of fights, of sadness, of joy, of pain, of deaths and births.  But through it all, they remained a family, the Mason family, stuck together with the mortar of not just common heritage, but of love.

I will admit, the family is a motley bunch, especially when you start including the in-laws.  They consist of homemakers, construction workers, college educated social workers, factory workers, and painters.  When you start including the kids and grandkids, it gets even more diverse.

It was always a little intimidating to get together with them as kids - and even now as adults - we were the quiet country cousins, uncouth in the ways of the city.  Mom was one of the few kids to move outside of her hometown. Of the ten kids in Grandpa Mason’s motley crew, seven of them ended up either back in South St. Paul or one of the surrounding suburbs, eight of them still live in St. Paul metro area, nine of them live in a city or town.

In short, we were a bit of the odd kids out it seemed.

But it didn’t matter - Uncle Dick, Uncle Lawrence, Aunt Lois, Aunt Ruthie, Uncle Tony, Uncle Ted, Aunt Beanie, Aunt Helen and Aunt Generose would love us regardless if we were in the country or out of the country, because in the end, we are family, and more than that, we are Mason’s, and Mason’s may be late to everything and Mason’s may not talk for a year or two, but when you need them, the Mason’s are there for you.

For the last decade or so, the Mason’s have gathered at my Aunt Beanie’s cabin up in the Northwoods of Minnesota.  This was the first year in a while that I didn’t make it up there, and I missed it.

It is always a good time - seeing the aunts and uncles, hearing the latest gossip, meeting the newest cousin and second cousins.  Retelling stories of the past.

But part of it too is that sense of belonging, knowing that regardless how right or how wrong things go, regardless how far up or how far down you go in live, there are people there willing to love you simply because you are Mary’s boy, and she was their sister, and you are expected to take them for who they are for those same simple reasons.

It might be a little awkward for a backwards country boy to fit in with his big city cousins, but for that feeling, it is definitely with it.

Grandpa Mason might not have been a brick layer or a stone cutter by trade, but he sure knew how to build things to last.

 Mason Family - Its Hard to Get them All in the Picture!

Mason Family (9 of the 10 kids…sorry Uncle Ted!)

 All roads lead to Mahnomen.

Well, at least Minnesota State Highway 59 and Minnesota State Highway 200.  And the Golf Course Road.  And we can’t forget Cemetery Road, the one that goes through the park.  Oh, and also the Boxcar Road, even though the boxcar was burned about ten years ago, it is the one that goes past the Catholic Church.

Anyway, this weekend, all roads lead to Mahnomen.

This weekend is Wild Rice Days, and not only Wild Rice Days, but it is the Mahnomen High School All School Reunion.  Those only take place every five years, and they are a very big deal.  Every class will have a float.  Well, most classes will have a float.  My class failed in that endeavor the last time around five years ago, but we kind of had an excuse, after all, who really celebrates an eleven year high school reunion.

Each class will get together.  My class is lucky in that regard, more than likely, we will move up north to one of the northern suburbs of Mahnomen, Bejou, to where one of my classmates is the barkeep and owner of the Lean-to Tavern.  Will the beverages won’t be free, the memories will be.

Wild Rice Days is a tradition in our little town.  The parade is the centerpiece.  It has all of the hallmarks of a typical small town parade.  The honor guard led the way, and they are followed by fire trucks, the police cars, the Shiners in from Fargo in their miniatures, and floats of every shape and sizes, also tractors and businesses have their entries.  Making their way up the back…due to their, ahem, exhaust, were the horses.

As a kid, I marched in the Mahnomen High School Band, tooting our horns and doing complex barn door style corners as we turned at Main and Jefferson Streets (right by the Catholic Church) and again as we turned off main at the Court House.

Dad was always an active participant for as long as I can remember…well; active is a bit of a strong word.  He and his fellow classmates, the Class of ‘47, would get an old 1947 grain truck, take the sides off to make it a flatbed, then put a picnic table on the back.  With ‘pop glasses’ and ‘adult beverages’ in hand, they would ride through the parade, waving at friends and neighbors, and generally soaking in the sights and sounds.

After the parade, there are a myriad of functions to attend.  Usually some games and carnival rides, and of course, the classes will get together.

In the evening, the Mahnomen County Deer Hunters will more than likely hold their game feed, probably either at the County Fairgrounds, or maybe by the park next to the Knights of Columbus Hall.

In the evening will be the street dance.  As a kid, that was the place to go.  It would have a live band, sometimes coming all the way in from Fargo.  The municipal liquor store would pull out the old beer truck, and you could get fried bread taco’s as you hung out with your friends, tried to impress the girls, and otherwise try to make a little mischief, but never too much….

We still had to milk the cows in the morning….

 The radio stations used to advertise mercilessly during the early summer months, enticing people to the center summer entertainment, the Red River Valley Fair.  Billed as the biggest fair between Minot and St. Paul (homes to the North Dakota State Fair and the Minnesota State Fair respectively), its entertainment shows were just hard to beat.

Listening to the advertisements as we milked cows, it sounded not only fun, but exciting.  Ten nights of some of the biggest names in the business, and good mixture to boot.  Martina McBride, Tracy Lawrence, Toby Keith, Bellamy Brothers, Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw were mixed with the likes of Iron Butterfly, Foghat, Foreigner, Ratt and a host of other 70’s and 80’s bands that appealed.

The country bands especially were the ones that we listened to day in and day out milking the cows.  In between the news, weather, sports and the jolly banter of Tom and Larry in the morning we heard the latest in country music.  And here these same people that were broadcast through that old one speaker wonder stuffed up the rafters were playing at the outdoor grandstand.

Our experience with live music was the band that they would normally get for the annual Wild Rice Day’s street dance.  In high school, I could only imagine the fun that the Red River Valley Fair must be, the rides, the games, but mostly, the bands.

Between my freshman and sophmore year in college, I bought one of the best tickets for summer - the Funtix.  The funtix allowed standing room seating, on the track, in front of the grandstand, for the whole weeks entertainment for a mere twenty bucks.

As we would say on the farm, that was a heck of a deal.

Sure enough, I put my twenty dollars to go use.  With thanks to my fraternity brothers, we would pile into a vehicle or two and drive down to the fair.  Most of us too young to get into the beer garden, we would head directly into the grandstand to enjoy the girls…I mean music….

This was after all, one of the highlights of the summer.  We would be in our best jeans and shirts, usually our boots as well.  Some of us would wear our best ball caps, other’s their Stetsons or straw cowboy hats.  And the girls, whew, the girls.  It was a smorgasboard.  Jeans, jean shorts, skirts, and cowboy boots.  Even the most citified of the girls usually managed to find a pair of cowboy boots.

And the women where there to have a good time and be entertained.

We saw some fantastic acts that year.  Some of them even up on stage.  Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill were the three that stick out in my mind (I will admit, I missed Iron Butterfly).

That first summer at the fair especially, was time of change and innocents for me.  A lot change…and less and less innocents….but a fantastic use of $20….

 I wasn’t there, but I imagine the summer of 1929 to be a hot and humid one, merely because that is how most summers are in Northern Minnesota, especially around the 4^th of July.  The countryside would certainly been different than the one that I knew growing up eighty-one years today, the day that my father was born.

The countryside that I grew up in, while the same latitude and longitude, would have been almost unrecognizable to the modern eye, while to my father, who has seen eighty-one years of change, the differences might be almost unperceived.  The trees and forests that covered that stretch of land and the humble homesteads connected by paths through the trees are the flat farm fields of today making a patchwork of the countryside, broken up only by those homesteads that have survived through luck, hard labor, or a little bit of both.

The nation was different too - 1929 would have been a time of innocents of sort for our country (or so we would like to believe) but also a time of enormous change.  The automobile was changing the landscape, and would have been neck and neck (pun intended) with the horse and carriage.  Telephones, common in places like Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York, would have to wait thirty plus years before hitting our little hamlet on the edge of the prairie.  Electricity would have to wait at least another ten years.

The countryside of my birth would have been filled with immigrants and adventurers, trying to make a go of it in a harsh land, beset by freezing cold winters and scorching summers, and enough trees to clear to give them work every day of the year.

Into was into this environment that my father was born, eighty-one years ago today, July 6^th, 1929.

Like that time, Dad has had to bridge some generations as well.

A devoted son, he left to see the world - serving in Korea and traveling through Japan in the service.  He wondered for a bit - working the harvest in southern Minnesota (Driving with Dad one day south of the cities, he casually glanced out at one of the little towns and said, “I camped over there.  Picking peas one summer”). He had dreams of the big city - using the GI Bill to become a machinist at Dunwoody and working in industry, until the siren call of home and family took him back into the north country.

Before he left, comfortable with the fact that he was going to be a bachelor for the rest of his life, some friends introduced this world wised country boy to a women ten years his junior, a fresh faced, though already toughened, city girl.  Two years later and they were married, living on the land that he had helped clear and wrestle from the wilderness.  For the next thirty plus years, he helped to set the standard for what being a good husband should be, until cancer wrestled the love of his life away.

He had children when most men were starting to enjoy their grandkids.  While his children went to school with the offspring of the ‘children of the sixties,’ he continued to tell them - and live for them - the value of hard work, of responsibility, of old fashioned stubbornness.

At eighty-one, Dad continues to reinvent himself in ways that few of any generation have been able to do.  In my lifetime, he has moved from the most dedicated of farmers, to retirement at sixty-five and a job in town, to now a devoted and hardworking member of the community still serving on boards and committees, and though moving a little slower due to COPD, he continues to think more clearly than most.

But even as I say he has ‘reinvented’ himself - in truth, the core, the root, the heart of the man hasn’t changed:  his unwavering faith in things not seen; his hope in people, and the ever changing world; his love of God, country and family.

Happy birthday Dad, and with admitted selfishness, I wish you many more to come.

 I don’t know if they really knew what they were doing back in 1776.  I don’t believe that they realized the far reaching consequences of their decisions, of the power of their words on the world, on society, and on the course of history.

In theory, history will tell us that the core root of the issue between the English and their colonists in the new world were about taxes - pure basic economics realities of the time.  And both the English and the Americans had justifications for what they did.  The American’s call for no taxation without representation is a basic tenant of democracy.  The English request, demand rather, that the American colonist actually pay their fair share of the bill for the French and Indian War and the cost of security, wasn’t without just cause either.

But it was the way that argument went.  It was the English forcing the colonists to bend to their will.  It was the imposition of a will upon a people that had no voice, or worse, a people unable to have their cries and appeals heard.

The basic premise of American Independence very well might have started with economics, but that was only the trigger for the underlying powder keg that actually blew the United States away from her mother country.

It was the slow but steady escalations in tensions on both sides that eventually destroyed the political ties.  It was pride and folly followed by callous disregard that finally caused the rupture in the relationship.  It was years of perceived abuse that called out the immortal words of our Continental Congress in the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

How could they have known?  These men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Edridge Gerry, Henry Lighthouse Lee, or Josiah Bartlett - how could they have guessed that they were setting down the foundation for a free world, of governments by the people, for the people and of the people.  How could they have known that their cries of truths - all men are created equal, that all are endowed with unalienable human rights, their cries that a government must facilitate these rights - would still be spoken, would still be fought for centuries later?

It is humbling to be an American, it is humbling to think of these brave men years ago and their vision for the future, it is even more so that we are still fighting their battle today, making sure that all have those same rights and liberties, making sure that all have opportunities, but making sure that the tyranny of a few doesn’t steal our liberties.  We still are guarding against that general erosion of liberties for the sake of socialistic enterprise so that we may not limit those fundamental rights.

There is a saying that with great power and great gifts come great responsibilities, as Americans, we can’t shrink from those responsibilities, so that a thousand years from now our descendants might speak of the freedoms and glories that we advanced for them in this noble cause.

 ”Alright, settle down…just a touch.” So spoke Mr. Erickson, our FFA Advisor as we rambunctiously piled into the van.

But for a group of farm kids ready to be let loose in the big city, how could we not be excited?

OK, so I use the term, ‘big city’ loosely.  This was our FFA/Ag Education summer trip, and we were heading to Fargo, North Dakota.  But for those of us that grew up in our town (or out of our town) of slightly more than a thousand people, Fargo, with a population of over one hundred thousand was a metropolis.

And we were going to see all of the best sites - the Livestock Auction, the Slaughterhouse, and the Tractor Factory…with lunch at Hardee’s.

Not a bad day for a group of farm kids from Mahnomen.

Our first stop was the livestock auction in West Fargo.  For most of us, I think we envisioned the sight of a cow being led into a pen and the auctioneer letting fly like she was a box of tools at an estate sale.  In truth, the system was much more complex, with pens of similar shaped and sized animals being bid on by buyers with computer printouts and charts at the ready.  Wanting to make sure that the carcass size and quality matched what they were looking for in their lots.

Then it was on to the slaughter plant.

Growing up, the process was a very personal thing.  We knew the animals that we harvested - that we processed for their meat.  We took them from their mothers, milk fed them by hand, moved them on the feed yard, and carefully watched their development until they were processed, by our own hands, into the steak and hamburger that we enjoyed throughout the year.

At the meat plant in West Fargo, it was much more impersonal.

The animals were led, humanely, through the process, knocked unconscious, lifted by their hind legs, throat cut, skinned and cut up.  For those that have seen, witnessed, or been a part of it, it was very natural, for those that had not, it wasn’t so much.

It didn’t help that the guy in charge of cutting the throats of the beeves making it across the kill floor was such a colorful character.  We were dressed in hairnets and white coats, crossing the catwalk above the kill floor as he hit his break.

Stepping back from the latest carcass, knife that had just cut the throat of the latest beef in one hand, the front of his white coat covered in blood, and took his Diet Coke off his chair.  Swirling the glass in the air, he looked up at us, said loudly enough for us to hear, “Better then working at the zoo!” and proceeded to take a long swig on his Diet Coke.

It was all a bit surreal.

Of course, our next stop was Hardee’s where we all enjoyed a big hamburger with fries (hey, we lived this stuff) then it was off to our last stop of the day - Case International’s Steiger Plant.

Steigers, for those not familiar with the agricultural lexicon, was one of the first four wheel drive tractors in the world, and was developed in the northwestern corner of Minnesota.  Case International (the combined forces of the Case Tractor Company and the International Harvestor Company) bought the rights to the tractor in the eighties and still operate the plant.

For many of it, it was the first look inside a manufacturing facility.  And it was impressive.  Massive in size and scale, it was manufacturing on a massive scale.  The amount of metal, steel, rubber, and hydraulics was astounding.  Robots cut and formed the steel and iron for the behemoths that would be working the fields in only weeks time.

It was stunning for someone whose largest tractor was an 806 International.

Driving home that night, just in time for evening chores, we were tired, but our eyes were wide open with the thought of the massive industry that American agriculture was and represented.

 Rhubarb.  Who ever thought of eating rhubarb?  Can you imagine that first person - how hungry they had to have been?

“Hey, this looks like a young cocklebur plant, or maybe a pig weed.  Anybody hungry?”

And let’s face it, rhubarb; especially the green stuff is tart.  Pucker you lips to a point where you face my suck in tart.  But mothers being mothers could take this tart plant and make magic.

Growing up on the northern plains, rhubarb was the first fruit (or is it a vegetable?) to emerge in the spring, sometimes with snow on the ground, the first sign of green in the yard were the first leafy shoots of the two rhubarb plants poking through the warming earth into the ever persistent spring sunshine.

Which meant that inevitably, rhubarb became the first fruit of summer.

Usually early June, Mom would go out and pluck the first shoots.  Bringing them into the house and cleaning them, taking the tops off, trimming off the bottom and making sure that she kept the leaves separate from the normal compost and rubbish that got dumped into the pasture by the slough.

“Those leaves might kill the cattle.  Make sure you keep it away from the pasture.” We were told.

As tart, as sour, as horrible as raw rhubarb tasted, we all looked on longing and never questioned mom’s instructions.  For we knew her ability to work miracles with the stuff.

Usually the first thing that we enjoyed was rhubarb sauce.  A concoction of rhubarb, last year’s strawberries (to help clean out the freezer), banana’s (over ripe and bought at discount from the grocer in town), and sugar.

When combined, it was pure heaven.  Mix in some fresh cream skimmed off the bulk tank or maybe over some ice cream and it was the perfect combination of taste, tangy and sweet.

Then there was her cake.  Or cakes rather.

The first one, and I think the easier was the standard cake with rhubarb cooked throughout the cake.  Combined with cinnamon, it was a tasty treat anytime, but especially warm and straight from the oven.  It was hard to time the baking just right to coincide with a meal, but usually, especially in June when we were making fences, hauling away winter’s manure, and doing other jobs around the farm, a little lunch before evening milking would be especially welcome if it was mixed with warm rhubarb cake.

But perhaps the piece de resistance was the rhubarb upside-down cake.

The world may never know how Mom accomplished this tasty treat.  I’ve not had one since she passed away and attempts by any of us to describe it have been met with blank faces, stares, and looks like my family are slightly off our rockers to assume that anything sounding so good made out of something that simple could be that darn good.

In short, it was a thick jello and rhubarb mixture, combined with a moist white cake.  When baked, the jello/rhubarb mixture was on the bottom, then flipped over when served. It.  Was.  Good.  So simple.  So good.

Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, rhubarb was short lived.  Attention swung towards the other summer delicacies, strawberries, fresh peas and beans, peaches and pears, corn on the cob, but as much as we hated the taste of raw rhubarb, I think we all still looked forward to those June days when the first tart taste of summer was made, seemingly magically, deliciously sweet.

 From the time I was a freshman at North Dakota State in Fargo…until I moved to Australia six seven months ago, there were two roads that my car, and my body could negotiate almost by themselves.

The first was the back roads that lead from Fargo to Mahnomen.

The second, the road that lead from Mahnomen to Minneapolis/St. Paul.  It was this road that I started driving during my FFA days.  Taking me to meetings, camps and conferences.  Taking me to visit friends and family.  Taking me to visit girls, see concerts, and explore the world.

After my time at Nnorth Dakota State, I used that road as the jumping off point.  It was the first two hundred and fifty miles on the seven-hundred and fifty mile trip to the University of Illinois in Champaign.  Still, once a month, I made that trip.  For two summers as an intern, I made that trip every week.  When my job took me to Minneapolis, I took that trip back and forth.

And it was a trip steeped in tradition.

As I was watching the local news in Australia Saturday morning, the news that Minnesota - my home state - had been struck by tornado’s was like an electrical shock.  Names of towns and villages that were part of my normal route, part of the landscape and countryside - were mentioned.  Some of them seemingly blown away.

The pictures and images of Wadena, MN.  The little town of 4000 people on the otherside of the world where I’m living, was my stopping point.  How many times did I stop for gas, or for a Mountian Dew for the road.  In bad weather, it would provide a stopping off point, a respite in the storm.  I saw the changes too.  When the Amoco turned to a BP.  The gas wars between the BP and the Holiday.  On more then one weekend, the town provided a chance to stop and stretch my legs.

In many ways, it was the half way point to getting home.

The sight of the destruction and devastation was heart wrenching.

I called family and friends to make sure that all was well.  My brother John talked at length.  The storm had touched down only miles from his little town.  Hitting turkey barns and toppling massive trees, and houses and farmsteads.

He told tales of the highway departments getting the snowplows out, to clear the road of debris.  Pieces of houses, branches, even tombstones ripped from the once quiet cemetaries.

In my mind, I pictured the hundreds of people that waited on me in the gas stations, that greeted me as I waited in line, that waved at me through their windsheilds.  Their lives turned to tumult.

But in their misery, they also hung onto what they hold dear.  Reading the news reports, they exhibited a sense of humor, a sense of belief in bigger things, and a passion to build their town and make it better then before.

This isn’t the first disaster to hit a small town.  But as Wadena and Mentor and the dozens of other towns throughout Minnesota weep, mourn, and rebuild, I hope they know while the buildings may be damaged and destroyed, the sense of community, of love of neighbor is probably stronger then ever.  Regardless if those neighbors are next door…or on the other side of the world.  Thoughts and prayers are with them.

 Getting the lumber home for the new hayracks was the easy part. It was a great way to spend time with Dad and to travel a day in the northwoods of Minnesota.  The work was building the hay racks.

These were not going to be your standard hayracks.  These were going to be giants.  Standard hayracks are normally sixteen feet long and hold eight to nine bales across.  Our racks were twenty four feet long, could hold twelve bales across, and ate cats for protein (that last part isn’t true…though the number of cats on the farm did decrease once we built them…I’m just saying…).

For the undercarriage, we had two Minnesota wagon frames, solid, sturdy, and built by prisoners of the Minnesota penal system, extended a bit with the help of some extra steel.

These things were solid.

On top of the extended Minnesota undercarriage, we had to have good, solid stringers.  On our old hayracks, we had some long 4 x 12’s.  We couldn’t find the 4 x 12’s for the stringers this time around, so like good farmers, we improvised.  Using a series of 2 x 12’s, we made our own.  And we did it well…perhaps even, an overkill.

First we glued them together.  And I mean glued.  Big gallon jugs of industrial strength wood glue were used to hold them together.  Then, we nailed them, careful to make sure that they didn’t stick out the otherside.  Finally, for good orders sake, we bolted them together.

Those stringers were not going to break.

Once those were in place on the undercarriage lengthwise, two on each side, we started placing the rough lumber across the rack, equally spaced, thanks to a block of wood, each of the boards were nailed down to the stringers.  At least two nails for each stringer, so a total of four nails per board…at a minimum.  All day long, we hammered away at the bed of the hayracks, over thirty boards per hayrack, measuring, cutting and nailing.

Once the stringers were in place, the beds nailed down with a careful one inch spacing in between them, we capped off the ends, so horizontal with the stingers, and perpendicular to the bed, we capped off the rough ends of the rack with an end board, bolted onto each board on each end, this made for a nice finish, covered any poor cuts, and made for a good sturdy rack.

Finally came the back.  Each rack needed a back to ensure that the hay stayed on and didn’t fall off the back, with our system of making hay, it also helped getting the loader tractor lined up right too.

The back was eight feet high by eight feet wide and consisted of four vertical boards and four horizontal boards.

These racks were sturdy and built to last.

There was only one last thing that needed to be done, protect them.  With paint brush in hand, we pained each rack with linseed oil, to provide a good finish and protection from the elements.

The racks were a lot of work, but we took a lot of pride in them.  As hard as it was to build them, making hay with them was no easy chore either.