16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: Her
middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later: The Muffly
family must have been making hay—always a hot, difficult job. A
hundred years ago hay was not baled. Instead dried loose hay was
brought into the barn on a wagon and then hoisted into the mow
using a rope and pulley system. I called my father to get help
figuring out what “carry the hay rope” meant. My father guesses
that Grandma was half carrying and half dragging the hay rope to
keep the horse from inadvertently stepping on it. Let me explain
how they used to get hay from the wagon into the haymows. (Some
of you probably know much more about how hay was made in the old
days—and please feel free to jump in if I’m not explaining it
quite right.) Dad said that when he was young there were pulleys
on a track that ran down the center of the inside of the barn
roof. Depending upon where the farmer wanted to pile the hay the
pulleys would be moved along the track. A young man with excel