In the days when farms and transport both required large animals, hay was VERY important. The old rhyme Candlemas Day, Candlemas Day, half your wood and half your hay, meant that if you had used MORE than half of your supply by February 2, you were going to be in big trouble before the season was out.
The 1860 state gazetteer showed an annual Steuben County production of 58,749 ¼ tons (0.93 tons per person – almost all by hand!). Bath came in first with 5931 ½ tons (0.98 1/3 tons per person!), more than doubling second-place Prattsburgh at 2953 ½. Troupsburgh, Howard and Woodhull weren’t too far behind Prattsburgh, while only Lindley, Erwin, and West Union (last at 721 tons) fell below four figures.
Hay was so vital, and so ever-present, that it soaked into America’s history, legends, and language. Little Boy Blue was under the haystack, fast asleep. The American Protestant missionary movement traditionally dates from the 1806 Haystack Prayer Meeting, when five Williams College students took shelter from a thunderstorm.
Shrewdly taking advantage of an opportunity meant that you were making hay on the situation. Racing to meet a deadline meant struggling like farmers, desperate to make hay while the sun shines – hay stored wet will spontaneously combust. Hayrows left by reaping would be piled into haystacks (or hayricks), then cut out with a long-handled hay knife and hauled to the barn where the hay could be pitched into haylofts or haymows. Changing technology would replace the haystacks with haybales, and then hayrolls or hayrounds.
After all that work of bringing in the sheaves, you’d probably want to hit the hay.
If your production ran surplus to your own needs, you’d take it to the haymarket. Haymarkets in big cities were large and bustling places. Police attacks on workers in Chicago led to the 1886 Haymarket Riots. Fifteen years later, Pulteney farmers were getting $10.50 a ton for October hay.
Exasperated sergeants (is there any other kind?) had Civil War recruits tie a sprig of hay to one ankle, and a sprig of straw to the other. Many weren’t too confident about left and right, but chanting “hayfoot, strawfoot, hayfoot, strawfoot,” taught them to march. A hayfoot was a new (probably hopeless) recruit… just like a hayseed was a naive country rube in the big city.
When coaches were confident that their teams were primed for the Big Game, they could brag that the hay is in the barn. If you won the game, that might be the time to hitch up the haywagon, call out your friends, and have a hayride.
While we don’t wish to be indelicate in a family publication, this could possibly lead to a roll in the hay. If tempers flared afterward, an aggrieved party might throw a haymaker.
If bad news came upon you without warning, you might feel like a load of hay landed on you. Beekeepers, on the other hand, insist that a swarm in May is worth a load of hay. If you were desperately hunting for something, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you persisted in using a horse once the new gasoline buggies ruled the road, people laughed at your hayburner.
Hay seems like humble stuff, but it was a vital commodity, close to the heart of America’s labor, economy, language, and folklore…
And that ain’t hay.