***loading hay bales***
Wow! Forgot about that! The man we worked for bucking hay would make his own bales and the weight would be close to 80 lb each, for HIS OWN use. For sale to others he made the bales 45 lb, charged them by the bale. We got paid the same for bucking and stacking both.
Then there was the misery of cleaning out chicken houses 10000-15000 chickens in each. $1 a manure spreader load.
Didn’t matter if you had four teens working filling or one , we got 1 dollar a load. Hot, dry, stinking, nasty work.
Any wonder so many of us went on to get educated so we would not have to ever do it again?
Oh, Lordy, yes!
Funny you should mention chickens. We ran a smaller scale chicken operation (about 10,000 birds total), so I have "shoveled chicken ****" also. This was before switching to beef cattle (hence the hay bales). But I'll still put pitchin' hay as worse....a shovelful of manure weighs a LOT less than a bale of hay.
AAAHH; remember those good old days well, that’s why I joined the Marine Corps at 18 years old, I wanted an easier job.