Some time about 1903 or 1904 the late John C. Easterly, who for many years was a county office holder, both as tax assessor and later as trustee and lived in Parrottsville and owned a farm there, bought the first horse powered hay baler that was ever operated in that neighborhood. The baler was made by the Chattanooga plow company and was made of all wood except the horse power and the transport wheels and axles.
At that time I and my brother Joe Bible were farming and had two teams of mules. Mr. Easterly hired one team of mules and my self to operate the baler, and also hired Edd Kelly and Newt Harbin to help with the feeding, tying and weighing of the bales., We baled hay and straw all over the neighborhood the rest of the summer. We carried, a set of counter scales with us and weighed every bale and tagged it with the exact number of pounds that each bale weighed. I do not know how much of Mr. Easterly paid Kelly and Harbin, but he paid me $2.50 per day for the team and myself. We charged seven cents for 100 pounds for both hay and straw.
The next spring Mr. Easterly made his hay rather early, with the idea of having it baled from the cock and storing it in the barn and getting it out of the way early, and have his baler busy on custom work. We set the baler near the middle of the field and he had the hay drawn up to the baler by a horse and rope. I remember that I thought that the hay was pretty moist and wandered if it would save. We finished the job and he had us drive the baler into the barn to keep it in the dry. He had the hay stored overhead in the barn and about the third night the barn caught fire and burned down and the baler with it. We always thought that the fire was caused by spontaneous combustion, and for that reason I would advise people who have baled when damp to not pack it closely in the barn, but rather scatter it out in the barn and let it dry out. After the burnout Mr. Easterly said that he never intended to do anything with the irons of the baler, that he considered it as a total loss. I asked him how much he would take for the irons and he said that if I could use them, that I could have them for $25.00. Actually, they looked like a pile of junk, but I operated the baler so long that I knew almost the exact dimensions of every part so I bought the remains of the baler and I and my brother Joe rebuilt it as good as new.
I don't think we had to buy any new parts, except possibly, a few tension springs. We operated this rebuilt baler for several years. We baled on Oven Creek, Clear Creek, Clay Creek and on down around Bybee as far as the Howard Huff farm. We would go horseback on Saturdays and contract a weeks work ahead and bale all the next week. We had one customer that we had baled for several years and we decided that if he had that baler he could bale his own hay and would not have to pay for it, so he asked us how much we would take for the baler. We made him a price of $135.00 and he would pay $35.00 down and give us a note for the balance, so the trade was made. We didn't know it at the time, but afterward we found out that he had planned on baling a lot of hay for his neighbors to get the balance of the money to pay us the balance on the baler.
It so happened that we had all the hay that he planned to bale under contract, and had no idea of quitting the business. So the next morning my brother went to Newport and took an early train to Knoxville and bought a brand new steel baler to be shipped to Newport on a flat car immediately. The next day we took our four head of mules and went to Newport and hitched to our new baler and drove to the next job below where we sold the old one and began to fulfill our contracts. When the man who bought the old baler found out that we were baling as usual, he was about the maddest man for a Preacher of the Gospel I ever saw. He was so mad that he refused to honor his note for the $100.00 and we had to threaten to sue him, but he finally paid up.
There used to be a railway station or siding two miles above Mosheim known as "Raders Side Track." This station lays in a valley where a lot of hay is grown but the growers had no ready market for their hay. We found out and contracted the hay to bale, and at the same time promised to help find a market for it. We learned that there was a good demand for hay in the cotton growing country of South Carolina and contracted some hay dealers there and made arrangements for them to handle all the hay we could ship them. In baling hay by the hundred pounds instead of by the bale as the custom is now, it pays to make the bales as heavy as possible. We always aimed at an average weight of at least 80 pounds per bale, and often went as high as 90 pounds average with some bales weighing over 100 pounds.
We contracted with the farmers to bale the hay at our regular price and they to deliver it to the side track the day of loading. We found that we could pay them $20.00 per ton, pay the freight to the S.C. market and come out with a reasonable profit for ourselves. We followed this practice for several years or until we finally sold the baler to Frank Walker. A few years later the first power press, operated by a gasoline engine was bought by someone in the Parrottsville neighborhood. I do not know who bought the power press, but I remember that Charley Fowler operated it for several years, or until the first "Pick Up" baler was bought in that neighborhood. Now, most every farmer who had several hundred bales of hay per year, has a pick up baler of his own. These new balers are fine and dandy, they save a lot of work for the farmers, but comparing an aluminum dish pan with a cast iron skillet. But this is all for the better because it eaves a lot of rotten hay and a lot of barn burn outs, which everyone wants to prevent.
A few months ago, some one had a column in the Banner telling about a lumber co, that had a logging camp in the mountains, and also had a commissary and carried in stock just about every thing a logger would need on his logging job. The writer stated that hay sold for a dollar per bale, and he went on to day that hay was the only commodity that had not gone up in price, that it was still selling for a dollar per bale. When I read it I wondered if he considered paying- a dollar for 35 to 50 pounds of hay was the same as paying a dollar for a 80 to a 100 pound bale like we made the old horse press. But looking at it another way, hay has gone down, down, down. The dollar that was paid for a bale of hay in my baling days was worth 100 pennies. The dollar that is paid for a bale of hay today is worth about 20 pennies.
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