Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Making some straw bales this time of year and just thought you guys would like to see the Stooker in action. It's a 15 bale Inland Automatic Stooker. I've never seen another one in my life anywhere and there's very little information on the internet about them. What I always heard is they came out in the late 70's right around the same time the round baler came out and as everybody knows most people switched to round bales for multiple reasons.

Not us though, we still put up the "idiot cubes". The benefits of stacking them in the triangle shape is helpful for a multitude of reasons:

1. The bottom bales don't sit flat on the ground, the edge only sits on the ground, keeping the strings off the ground and is good for long term storage.
2. Triangle shape allows them to shed water easier.
3. Allows pickup with tractor attachment and stacking.

With the tractor attachment you can pick a triangle up and place it next to another triangle. The attachment then allows you to flip a stack 180 degrees and stack an upside down triangle between the two uprights. And then another triangle on top of that. Basically making a huge triangle that is not touching the ground and shedding water. Ideal for storage.

Basically something like this:

..../\
/\ \/ /\

That's pretty cool it looks like mini Egyptian pyramids from a distance.

In the early 60's as a teenager I helped on a neighbors farm during hay season . He put up 10K bales each year , i was the biggest helper so my job was to hand pick up each "idiot bale " and lift onto the flatbed truck , the next biggest boy stacked them for transport , youngest daughter steered the truck thru the fields , then to the barn for unloading into the loft .
Never did like that work , but the pay was good , $10 a week sun up to sun set + room and board .
and walked 5 miles to schoo; up hill both ways .

WOW! Thanks for the pictures. Today is going to be a good day, because I've already learned something new. In all my years driving through the country never had seen the pyramid hay stacker. I've seen the baler that shoots the bales onto a wagon but this is a first.