To say Junior Hurlburt grew up on a baler is not an exaggeration. Hurlburt, now age 67 and retired from farming near Lone Rock in Kossuth county, said ''Haying was our big thing because my mother and us 5 kids lived on 80 acres and that wasn't much.''

Hurlburt started baling at an early age saying, ''When I was 5 years old I had to sit on the old John Deere next to the straw stack and tie. As soon as I was able to waddle I'd go along because it saved hiring one man. Back in those days there wasn't a lot of profit in anything.''

Baling out of straw stacks was common then. Hurlburt said, ''We did more baling after summer than we did in the summer. We baled out of stacks and the hay mow. Most people would bale in January and February because back in those days a lot of people moved so they had to move their straw if the landlord would let them take it and their hay before the first of March. They always picked the coldest day in the winter time.''

Hurlburt's knowledge of balers and baling is from first hand experience owning over 40 balers. He has seen balers develop from the stationary baler to the large balers of today.

His father Ralph Hurlburt had a hand in the evolution of the baler. Junior Hurlburt said, ''About 1936 my father, Ralph Hurlburt, took an old hay loader and put it behind our stationary hay baler and put an engine on the baler which was an old Hercules. We had the first windrow baler. John Deere came out and took all kinds of pictures and they took our machine back to Waterloo. In 2 years time John Deere built their first windrow baler.''

In exchange for using the prototype baler Hurlburt said John Deere ''serviced our old machines as long as we had them and I would give anything to find an old John Deere stationary hay baler now.''

Hurlburt dsecribed the stationary baler saying, ''You have to have a platform because in those days you didn't have needles. We had to walk to the back end and get a wooden block that had grooves in it and that's where the wire went through so you had to have a platform to walk back and forth. The man who fed it stood up on a table that was about five feet high and fed the hay in the old machine. If you got 500 bales a day that was a pretty big day and we got 7 cents a bale that was divided among the 4 workers.''

Junior Hurlburt operated a baling business for 50 years that was comparable to the way corn shellers were run for many years.

Hurlburt said, ''In the summertime we'd come home from baling just at dusk and there'd be 3 or 4 people in the yard wondering 'What day can I mow my hay.' Back then we didn't have crimpers so it had to lay 3 or 4 days. Then when the crimper came in that speeded things up and after the Second World War there got to be a little more money evidently because neighbors were buying their balers together and we baled from Algona to Iowa Lake. There was a big farm at Armstrong, we baled for them. And we would have 3 machines there sometimes for 3 or 4 days.''

Hurlburt did not keep his baling activities just in northern Iowa. Hurlburt said, ''We would go to North Dakota and bale flax straw every Fall around Fargo and Grand Forks. We'd move like the gypsies with as high as 4 or 5 machines. We'd go for 30 days working from daylight until after dark and that lasted 10 years from 1949 through 1959.''

The introduction of the self-tieing baler around 1950 was pivotal point in baler evolution.

Hurlburt recalled his first self-tieing baler saying, ''When J. I. Case came with a kit to put on a baler to make it a self tieing baler I said those kits are for the birds. The Algona dealer got a new Case baler in and it had the kit already on it from the factory and I walked around that for about 2 weeks time. I got the only one R. C. Taylor in Algona was going to get that year. I walked around that and said 'That thing will not work' and I sold it. I never used it. A brand new machine. Well, that so happened that was the last baler I ever got from Mr. Taylor because he was going to use this baler because we did custom work and it was going to be a selling point. I said it won't work and they didn't. They only made that baler for one more year after that.''

Hurlburt has now restored a 1942 Case baler that requires 2 people to sit on the back and tie bales.

He said, ''Twenty-five years ago I saw it sitting in a grove. The tires were deep in dirt. Milton Riedel had used it until it quit working. Several times I'd see him and I'd say I'd like to buy that old baler. Three years ago I finally got him to consent to sell it. But I said, 'I probably can't afford it.' I figured something like that was worth alot of money and it was to me. 'Well,' he said,'I tell ya what. Would 50 dollars be too much?' I paid him right then. When we went to get it out we had an awful time to getting it out of the holes it was in. Everything was stuck from rust. It was just brown. I've tried getting him to come and look at it now and he doesn't want to see it.''

Once the baler was home the work continued. Hurlburt said, ''The motor was stuck on it and I found one at a junk yard at Elmore, MN that didn't have a magneto or carburetor on it. I took the magneto and carburetor off the old one and we got it running.''

Hurlburt was able to purchase 3 bundles containing the strands of wire used to tie the bales at a neighbor's sale. Hurlburt said, ''You got a spool of wire with 500 strands in it and each one had an eye in it. That's how you kept track. The earlier balers didn't have a counter. When you got done you counted the wires.''

Pulling Hurlburt's restored baler is a John Deere GP that belonged to an uncle who lived near Seneca. Hurlburt got the tractor 25 years ago, which according to Hurlburt ''had never seen a shed since 1928.''

The restored Case baler was used last year to bale a road ditch. Hurlburt was aided by his sister Rita Schroeder and brother Merwyn Hurlburt both around the age of 60.

Balers are Junior Hurlburt's first love and he will attend a farm sale just to see what the baler brings. Hurlburt is now restoring a early model New Holland 77 baler while he searches for a John Deere stationary baler he would like to show at Lone Rock's Centennial in 1999.

Of his life with balers Hurlburt said, ''Just about anything we did then went back to the hay balers. It was a lot of work. It was fun and I still enjoy it. I can't retire completely because I don't have any hobbies.''

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