Figure 157.—California Hay Ricker, for putting either wild hay or alfalfa quickly in ricks. It is used in connection with home-made buck rakes. This ricker works against the end of the rick and is backed away each time to start a new bench. The upright is made of light poles or 2 x 4s braced as shown. It should be 28 or 30 feet high. Iron stakes hold the bottom, while guy wires steady the top.
CALIFORNIA HAY RICKER
In the West hay is often put up in long ricks instead of stacks. One of my jobs in California was to put up 2,700 acres of wild hay in the Sacramento Valley. I made four rickers and eight buck rakes similar to the ones shown in the illustrations. Each ricker was operated by a crew of eight men. Four men drove two buck rakes. There were two on the rick, one at the fork and one to drive the hoisting rig. Ten mowing machines did most of the cutting but I hired eight more machines towards the last, as the latest grass was getting too ripe. The crop measured more than 2,100 tons and it was all put in ricks, stacks and barns without a drop of rain on it. I should add that rain seldom falls in the lower Sacramento Valley during the haying season in the months of May and June. This refers to wild hay, which is made up of burr clover, wild oats and volunteer wheat and barley.
Alfalfa is cut from five to seven times in the hot interior valleys, so that if a farmer is rash enough to plant alfalfa under irrigation his haying thereafter will reach from one rainy season to the next.