Stubbornness led to stinging

Since it’s well into hay cutting season, here’s a story that is testament to a slower and simpler era of hay cutting.

This is a true story from my youth near Ridgeville in the summer of 1978. 

Many years ago, I was privileged to work on an antique-filled farm.

On this farm we had magical antiques kept in tip-top shape and still maintained in full working order.             

We had two working steam engines, a sawmill, several antique steel wheeled tractors and two teams of draft horses, a team of oxen, and one team of mules. 

Now, for anyone who knows anything at all about mules, you know, they are very strong, good workers in the harness, but they have one character flaw. 

They have a stubborn streak a mile wide. 

When they decide to stop, they stop, and they simply won’t go until they decide they are ready to go. 

One very warm, humid morning, the farmer’s son and I were getting ready to mow hay with the old McCormick-Deering ground propelled sickle bar mower. 

We hooked up the team of mules to it that morning and he took off around the perimeter of the field to be mown, to cut it in.

Somewhere along a fence row, in the shade, the mules decided to stop for a break.

Unfortunately they stopped after stirring up a ground nest of big carpenter (bumble) bees.

What transpired next, looking back, was one of the funniest things I ever saw in person. 

At the time, I can assure you it wasn’t a bit funny. 

The bees decided they were not a bit amused by the intrusion, so the boss bee came out, surveyed the intruders and whistled for his pals to “c’mon out and join the fun!”

In a matter of seconds, those mules decided that stubbornness was not the thing to be doing at that moment, and they took off.

Now, to anyone familiar with a ground-propelled 1920s era McCormick-Deering sickle bar mower, you know they are designed to operate at a slow, methodical pace, a rate of forward progress that mules being attacked by bees exceeded by a good margin. 

The faster they went, the more parts began disassociating themselves from the mower, now operating at a frantic pace that it quite simply was never designed to operate at. The farmer’s son was hanging onto the seat and reigns for dear life, but thankfully when he did lose his seat, he fell off behind the mower bar and was just bruised up a bit. The mules finally stopped, and he and I walked that field for hours picking up parts that the old antique mower had shed during its high-speed run. 

We got the old mower back together and it was still fully functional for years afterward.

That memory of the mules taking off at a dead run and the mower shedding parts as it came apart is one I’ll take to my grave.

Mules are a stubborn lot, but bees can get them moving in a hurry.