What we would call today, "Doing it the Hard Way"

Those of us who grew up on farms and ranches can remember vividly the summer exercise program that involved square bales. Standing behind a baler stooking bales when it was 30 plus C in the blistering sun and dust, not to mention the bazillion mosquitoes. That was just the beginning, once the bales were made and stooked it was then time to haul them home for the winter feeding. Above shows the hard work involved day after day, Manfred and Julius Schroeder in 1968 in the picture, the old truck was a school bus they converted into a grain truck. First throwing those 50 lb. bales up onto the truck, note how high the load is. Then unloading them, and of course the more you hauled the higher the stack got. When spring finally came and all those bales had been fed to the cows we handled them at least 5 times and maybe more in some cases, then it was time to haul them back out to the field in a completely different form. No need to be going to the gym back then.