I used to do this with my cousin
They used to tell us that big stacks of bales straight after harvest are a bad thing because they'll be slightly damp, and in big piles the heat that is generated by the natural bacteria beginning the process of decay can cause the whole stack to catch fire.
Which is clearly bollocks, because nowadays the bales themselves are the size of the castles etc. we used to build from the smaller bales of the 1970s.
Mostly, it turned out, it was because they couldn't load them on the trailers as easily and had to stop, which took time and energy. Less because they're lazy than because it was their busiest time of year and they were knackered to begin with.
Now they use bales fifty times the size and specialist handling equipment - the extra cost of having to buy all that outweighs what they used to have to pay farmhands to do it all by muscle. And the extra they had to pay them to demolish den built by local kids.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 19 Oct 2012, 14:48, Reply)