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WOW! Follow the link of the OP and see a lot of colorful Romanian culture! So, they make haystacks to feed the livestock in the winter. Yup, that is a near u

WOW! Follow the link of the OP and see a lot of colorful Romanian culture! So, they make haystacks to feed the livestock in the winter. Yup, that is a near universal need for any farming with animals, that is, a near universal foundation of the economy of the world. Sooo, also in the US, we have to harvest and store hay for the winter. So, now I remember: As a child, late one summer our family took a vacation and visited the area where Dad grew up, in the small town of West Valley, NY, a little south of Buffalo, NY. Dad's family didn't farm: His father owned the West Valley general store, and his step father owned the West Valley feed and grain mill. But one of Dad's childhood friends ran a dairy farm, and I got to visit, right, just as they were "making hay while the sun shined". So, I rode in the wagon back to the barn: Now the situation is different from Romania and a lot more from Europe can see with a simple Google search. The barn was, yes, for the animals. But the barn had a second floor, the hay loft -- right, another solution to the same problem as the Romanian haystacks. The hayloft was a large flat area, a whole second floor. At one end of the barn, there was an opening in the side wall. And there was a pulley centered in the opening, maybe 8' above the floor of the hayloft, and maybe 4' outside of the end wall of the barn. Now want to move the hay to the hayloft, a way to store the hay for the winter and an alternative to the Romanian haystacks. So, grab maybe 200 pounds of the hay with some curved steel fingers like a hand grabbing a lot of spinach, run a rope from the top of the fingers to the pulley and from the pulley to a heavy horse, have the horse walk slowly and pull on the rope, and, thus, move the hay up to the opening on the side of the barn. Then pull the hay into the hayloft of the barn. For more, there can be a trolley system that will move the hay well into the barn and let it fall onto the floor of the hayloft. So, right, "make hay while the sun shines" so that avoid the hay being wet and rotting -- same problem the Romanian haystacks solved. Another step in handling hay can be to make hay bails. Some hay bails are cylinders maybe 6' in diameter and 5' high. Maybe a more common hay bail is rectangular -- there is a really good video of making such hay bails in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2wviNS48kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2wviNS48kc At one point the video shows that the hay bails are held together with wire. That would be the universal repair material, along with chewing gum, called bailing wire. Now I more fully understand what I saw in that West Valley vacation when I was a child! To continue, following the URL of the OP here, can see a lot of Romanian farm houses. They don't look like they have Internet, TV, telephone, or electric power. Not so long ago in the US: When my future wife invited me to her home, they had a working farm. In one respect, they were modern in that both parents had college educations. But they had no cable TV, and their telephone was only on a party line. The area had only recently gotten electric power. Since then that area has become fully modern. It does appear that in technology (A) in some ways within a few decades US farming areas were only a few decades ahead of Romanian farming areas but (B) in the last few decades the US farming areas have moved ahead much faster than the Romanian ones. Then, it is not clear that the US farming area people are happier than the Romanian ones!

hvna 5y ago
I would like to say, having lived in villages very similar to these in Transilvania, Romanian farm houses absolutely have internet, smart phones and internet.
- graycat 5y ago
  WOW. Thanks. The images I saw showed the houses as nearly all log cabins where the logs were not painted, and I didn't see anything that looked like electric power lines. Can get Internet from just cell phones although of course need a source of electric power to charge the smartphones. Maybe those areas of Europe are catching up, in the technology that is worth having, with England, the US, etc. I wish them well and hope so.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    If you look at TFA there's a photo of a haystack in front of a small manor sized brick house :) The photos of traditional wooden cabins are more for tourists, or in very remote areas. Edit: come to think of it, wooden cabins aren't so traditional outside the mountains. https://gatzi.sunphoto.ro/case_traditionale_romanesti https://gatzi.sunphoto.ro/case_traditionale_romanesti This looks more like the traditional poor peasant's houses (photos from 1933) and they're made of mud bricks (not sure what the english term actually is) with some wood reinforcement in the walls.
    - graycat 5y ago
      "TFA" means WHAT the heck? I just followed the URL given in this thread and commented on what I saw in LOTS, dozens, of pictures and compared with some of what I know about how the US has solved the problem of gathering and safely storing summer hay for winter animal feed. In the URLs I followed, nearly all the houses I saw were what in the US are called log cabins and had old logs and no paint. I didn't see any "mud bricks". From what I saw, there was no sign of electric power. Thus there would be no "land line" telephones either; from that I concluded no "telephones" -- I didn't think of the old satellite phones, cell phones, or the new versions of phone and internet via constellations of satellites. Maybe everything I saw was just for tourists. Okay. I saw a LOT of pictures; maybe they all were for show. In that case, John Deere should open some branch offices (if they haven't already) and sell some of their terrific, highly computer controlled, automated farm equipment, in particular for converting hay fields into bails of hay. Or for planting, growing, and harvesting wheat, corn, or soy beans. But John Deere can change the culture of a farming community: Their equipment can be highly productive but also highly expensive. The pair can mean that a father and his two sons can run a farm of 5000+ acres. E.g., my father in law's farm was just 88 acres. He raised a family on that (40,000 chickens per batch) and got all three of his children through college. And as electric power came along, he led in the effort and became the head of the local electric utility and lobbied in Washington, DC for the relevant legislation (REMC -- rural electric membership cooperative). He did well: One of his daughters was Valedictorian in high school and Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, NSF Fellow in college, and high end research university Ph.D. One of his grand daughters was Valedictorian in high school, Phi Beta Kappa in college, got her law degree at Harvard, started as a lawyer at the high end New York City law firm Cravath-Swaine, got an MD, and now is practicing medicine. But the 88 acres doesn't work very well now; what he did was tough; it would tougher now. Due to progress in productivity such as from John-Deere, there has been massive consolidation of those little farms into farms of a few thousand acres operated by remarkably few people, for growing wheat, corn, soy beans, or grazing cattle for milk or meat. So, maybe Romania is doing the same, the hay stacks put together by hand with wooden tools are just for the tourists, and John Deere is getting a lot of business. Good for Romania.

hvna 5y ago

I would like to say, having lived in villages very similar to these in Transilvania, Romanian farm houses absolutely have internet, smart phones and internet.

graycat 5y ago
WOW. Thanks. The images I saw showed the houses as nearly all log cabins where the logs were not painted, and I didn't see anything that looked like electric power lines. Can get Internet from just cell phones although of course need a source of electric power to charge the smartphones. Maybe those areas of Europe are catching up, in the technology that is worth having, with England, the US, etc. I wish them well and hope so.
- nottorp 5y ago
  If you look at TFA there's a photo of a haystack in front of a small manor sized brick house :) The photos of traditional wooden cabins are more for tourists, or in very remote areas. Edit: come to think of it, wooden cabins aren't so traditional outside the mountains. https://gatzi.sunphoto.ro/case_traditionale_romanesti https://gatzi.sunphoto.ro/case_traditionale_romanesti This looks more like the traditional poor peasant's houses (photos from 1933) and they're made of mud bricks (not sure what the english term actually is) with some wood reinforcement in the walls.
  - graycat 5y ago
    "TFA" means WHAT the heck? I just followed the URL given in this thread and commented on what I saw in LOTS, dozens, of pictures and compared with some of what I know about how the US has solved the problem of gathering and safely storing summer hay for winter animal feed. In the URLs I followed, nearly all the houses I saw were what in the US are called log cabins and had old logs and no paint. I didn't see any "mud bricks". From what I saw, there was no sign of electric power. Thus there would be no "land line" telephones either; from that I concluded no "telephones" -- I didn't think of the old satellite phones, cell phones, or the new versions of phone and internet via constellations of satellites. Maybe everything I saw was just for tourists. Okay. I saw a LOT of pictures; maybe they all were for show. In that case, John Deere should open some branch offices (if they haven't already) and sell some of their terrific, highly computer controlled, automated farm equipment, in particular for converting hay fields into bails of hay. Or for planting, growing, and harvesting wheat, corn, or soy beans. But John Deere can change the culture of a farming community: Their equipment can be highly productive but also highly expensive. The pair can mean that a father and his two sons can run a farm of 5000+ acres. E.g., my father in law's farm was just 88 acres. He raised a family on that (40,000 chickens per batch) and got all three of his children through college. And as electric power came along, he led in the effort and became the head of the local electric utility and lobbied in Washington, DC for the relevant legislation (REMC -- rural electric membership cooperative). He did well: One of his daughters was Valedictorian in high school and Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, NSF Fellow in college, and high end research university Ph.D. One of his grand daughters was Valedictorian in high school, Phi Beta Kappa in college, got her law degree at Harvard, started as a lawyer at the high end New York City law firm Cravath-Swaine, got an MD, and now is practicing medicine. But the 88 acres doesn't work very well now; what he did was tough; it would tougher now. Due to progress in productivity such as from John-Deere, there has been massive consolidation of those little farms into farms of a few thousand acres operated by remarkably few people, for growing wheat, corn, soy beans, or grazing cattle for milk or meat. So, maybe Romania is doing the same, the hay stacks put together by hand with wooden tools are just for the tourists, and John Deere is getting a lot of business. Good for Romania.