#beaverslide

When old ways are best, hay baling edition: "Why Don’t You Beaverslide?" @katiehillwriter.bsky.social

(Plus- Country Life)

Nevada Creek, Montana

The Beaverslide was invented a hundred years ago in Montana’s Big Hole Valley. An intricate net of poles, pulleys, and cable, it stacks hay into 30 foot x 30 foot cubes designed expressly to store forage through the brutally dry and cold winters of the Western high plains.

Despite its low cost and ingenious design, the massive apparatus is seldom used these days. The slide requires a large crew to operate, and where manpower was once traditionally shared among neighboring ranching communities, dwindling rural populations have made the necessary labor hard to gather.

Earl and Glenna Stucky still hay by Beaverslide at their ranch in the Nevada Creek area outside Avon, Montana, albeit with some upgrades: teams of horses and mules once tasked with hoisting the slide have been replaced by custom built motorized jalopies called “buck rakes.”

As for labor, perhaps the most important aspect of Earl and Glenna’s operation is the proximity and cohesion of their extended family. Come haying season, most the work is done by three generations of Stuckys that live on or near the ranch, supplemented by about 15 local hired hands. Even the grandkids, too young to help, play and observe from the shade of a pup tent, studying for the season when they are enlisted to work.