IN the Evening Press you ran a photograph taken in the early 1900s of a baler baling hay powered by a traction engine (Yesterday Once More, February 2, see above).

For nine months after leaving school in wartime I worked for a man who went round baling hay and straw with a similar type of baler, although not powered by a traction engine but with a petrol engine on the top. Unlike the photograph there were three of us: one on the stack, I was feeding the machine and one taking the bales off and stacking them.

Sometimes when baling hay the stack would be cut down with a hay spade.

The baler did not have brakes and was moved around from farm to farm by a tractor, on one occasion by a team of horses which pulled waggons laden with wood.

One day it was being pulled downhill by a light tractor. The driver took it down the grass field instead of the rough track, no doubt hoping the grass would act as a brake. Halfway down the baler jack-knifed round the tractor. Looking back, I have often thought how lucky that driver was. He opened the throttle and kept the tractor in front.

The caption under the photograph stated that it was hay time, though the hay could have been baled at other times of the year as well, as we were doing.

R Crackles,

Galtres Drive,

Easingwold,

York.

Updated: 11:13 Wednesday, February 18, 2004