This was once a hayshed

When I was a little lad and my father still had his farm in Waitekauri, he had a horse to pull the mower to cut the long grass for hay. Later he borrowed the neighbour's tractor and mower and later still he had his own tractor, but still borrowed the mower to connect to it. If my memory is correct he continued making haystacks. My mother would stand on the top when it became higher, and Dad would throw forkfuls up onto the top.

This shed was built for bales. As an older lad, when Dad had sold the farm and had moved to be a farm labourer on a scheme little short of indentured labour, I made summer holiday money by helping pick up bales and put on the trailer, and/or put them from the trailer into barns like this one. Hard work, but very satisfying for a teenager to show strength.

This shed is now used for silage wrapped in plastic rather than placed in a cutting into a hillside and then covered with earth, as Dad made silage. Tractors are needed to pull the mower, and the tedder to turn the grass (for hay), and to tow the machines to make the bales of hay or silage. And then to move the bales into storage. All in the name of efficiency. 

Yet it costs so much more than having a horse, which only needs grass to eat