Farm Work Notes · 10:51pm Sep 29th, 2015
Farm Work blog post.
So this was going to be the cover image
But for some reason it wouldn't transload. I tried converting it to a .png and to a .jpg, and it didn't work like that, either.
As always, thanks to my prereaders: "anonymous badger" and AShadowOfCygnus, as well as MSPiper, who was literally still making suggestions while it was in the approval queue. I kind of threw this on the guys at the last minute.
All the characters are from Equestria Girls, with the exception of Tree Hugger—I haven't seen the new movie, but she wasn't in the first two.
Fuchsia Blush is one of Trixie's backup singers. She's on the left.
Source
I'm pulling images from other sources, because the Wiki links weren't working.
Cloudy Kicks is a background human. Also, she looks kind of like Cloud Kicker, which is probably why she got the name.
From Derpiboo.ru
Also, based on that previous image, she's probably Trixie's other backup singer, but oddly the Wiki didn't mention that and I just don't have time to verify because I have to be to play rehearsal in nine minutes and I haven't even eaten dinner yet.
Tree Hugger is a hippie pony.
Source
Sunset Shimmer is . . . well, I hope y'all know who she is.
Source
Miss Cheerilee is a librarian at Canterlot High
Source
And Big Mike is a background human.
You don't get an image, 'cause I can't find one that will actually load.
And if any of the other ones don't, here's the list of the EqG character wiki. They're all on there.
I would imagine those of you who have had the privilege of unloading or stacking haybales are nodding your heads through the first half of the story. If you've never done it, I recommend that you avoid it at all costs. It sucks. It's hot, miserable work; the bales are heavy, sometimes the bailing twine breaks, and hay gets everywhere. Places you didn't know it can get.
Based on some googling I did, the weight of bales on each wagon was probably between eight and nine thousand pounds.
I think I mentioned that stacking hay sucks.
I was fortunate in not having to do very much research for this. Actually, I pretty much didn't have to do any. For better or worse, I've had pretty much every experience our protagonist had at one point or another in my life (so I guess this is a shameless self-insert). Admittedly, those experiences stretched over about a decade.
I guess from an autobiographical standpoint, the two main things to take away from this are that being the only guy working in a restaurant isn't nearly as awesome as it sounds, and that I really did become a certified lifeguard at Boy Scout camp because I had the hots for one of the swim instructors.*
Oh yeah, and that stacking hay sucks.
____________________________________________________________________________
*Interestingly, when I got it, the BSA lifeguard program was more involved than the Red Cross's. Since at Boy Scout camp you were likely to be performing rescues on a lake, you not only had to know CPR and all the other lifeguard stuff, you also had to have the following merit badges: Swimming, Sailing, Rowing, Canoeing, Powerboating, and First Aid. And you had to be able to swim a mile.
One detail which didn't make it into the story: the t-shirt Fuchsia is wearing is a band shirt. Which band, you ask? Why, The Unicorns, of course. She got it after the released the album Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone. I couldn't figure out a way to work that detail in the story.
Also also, I learned how to spell Fuchsia.
I wasn't planning to write this story. I was test-driving a vehicle, and I passed by a local farm, and they were baling hay. That reminded me how much that sucks (really, any kind of farm labor does), and I thought about writing a story about hay season, and then I had some flashbacks, and then a story suddenly appeared.
Based on early voting, people are apparently offended by nudity. Or stacking haybales.
It's probably the latter.
3430423 I was going to say people are offended by nudity without an accompanying mature tag, but then I recalled this is for a nudist group(?).
But let's be honest. It's because of balding hay.
Actually, there are two girls who look like Cloud Kicker in Rainbow Rocks: one in Trixie's band, and the sports player who appears on the sidelines. There are a couple of shots where you can see both of them in the frame at once, though the only one I remember right now is the wide view after the "Friendship Is Magic!" yell during the kickoff party scene. I know this came up in the comments of a previous blog post, so maybe there are some links there; of course, figuring out which might well take more time than just looking through the movie to re-find them....
3430610
I'm pretty sure the consensus is that Cloudy is the sports girl, and Trixie's bandmate is someone else.
Stacking hay and/or anything having to do with hay sucks!
I was pretty much an assistant manger at a horse ranch among many other things. So I know that pain.
Nudity is not something to be offended over. Its a bit of a limited mindset to be.
Course I am practically a nudist myself.
And yes im currently nude.
3430423 Meh, some people, they'd complain if you hanged 'em with a velvet rope...
3430713
It's not the worst thing I've ever done, but it's certainly on the list of things I've done once and therefore never need to do again.
Agreed.
3430794
True dat.
As someone who grew up on a farm all the references to hay bailing are spot on. My father like the bails to be over 30lbs and he wanted them and on the rack 7 or 8 high. Ugh so glad I now work evenings so I get out of this job.
I did like your submission to the writing prompt Admiral Biscuit, it was well written and quite entertaining. My only wish is that you linked the group somewhere so people would learn of the group, but I can't complain...
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
23:43_9/29/2015
No shit?
I'm 99% sure she was also seen teaching in a classroom.
3430423
The latter.
3430713
Very true.
I plead the 5th.
3431190
Hey, I don't assume all my readers know who all the ponies are.
Probably in Rainbow Rocks (which I've only half-seen).
The one time I bucked hay bales was at my uncles farm in Colorado. I was wearing shorts at the time.
I recall it somewhat fondly, but that's probably just because we got to build them into a giant tower later.
lol? I thought you were joking! Her freaking name is Tree Hugger.
3431675
It was in EqG1 - during the Strange New World song, and maybe a couple of other spots.
And why haven't you finished Rainbow Rocks? You really need to get on that, especially if you're planning to make more EqG setting stories.
3430934
I don't remember how heavy the bales we were stacking were (but they were green, so probably pretty heavy). Since we were filling a hayloft, I think they wound up being stacked fifteen or more high. It's a job I'd rather not ever do again.
3431112
I did think of putting it in the story description, but kinda forgot. On the other hand, at the time it was published, the Nudists and Nudity group was the only one the story was in. . . .
3431643
I drank the fifth.
3432147
I've got mixed feelings. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever done (and yes, like our protagonist, I volunteered to help my girlfriend), but it's not something I'd be enthusiastic about doing again.
3433548
Well, someone might be reading this who hasn't watched any season 5 episodes, or who's not familiar enough with English to understand what her name means. True story, my pre-readers and I have had some discussions of idioms in chapter comments. Here's an example (edited for brevity):
3435326
Well, that explains it. I fast-forwarded through the songs.
It wasn't as useful to me as EqG1. I'm not a huge fan of the franchise, but in the first there were some golden 'pony finds herself on Earth' moments that I could build on. I wrote both the Sonata stories for One-Shot-Ober without having watched RR; when I did finally watch RR, it was while I was doing housework, so I kind of only saw bits and pieces of it.
I probably should sit down and watch through the whole thing, but who's got time for that?
3439898
Rainbow Rocks is good enough to be worth making time for, especially since it's a relatively short movie. I doubt it's going to make any "top ten movies of the decade" lists or anything, but I found it sufficiently enjoyable that I'd consider rewatching it for fun, rather than only for research.
And don't skip the songs this time! Doing so during the first movie is understandable, but the ones in Rainbow Rocks are much better overall. I'd personally call most of them either good or great, and even if you don't care for the intentionally-bad stuff, it still has some decent background humor.
3439884 Fair enough.
FYI: I remember stacking alfalfa and prairie hay bales well. Most of those square monsters pack out at 50 pounds or so, leaving a three person team. You had one scrawny kid (me) driving the tractor, nice and slow so nothing fell off. One hefty kid (my biggest brother) heaving the bales off the ground and lifting them up, and one somewhat less hefty but still strong as a bull kid (my big brother) on top of the wagon, using a hay hook to grab the boosted bale and situate it so all the layers of hay interlock. Around the fifth or sixth layer, the bottom booster is boosting a fifty pound lump up *over his head* repeatedly, all day long while the guy on top of the wagon is swinging a steel hook just inches from his face and hands as he reaches *down* to hook the bale and drag it into position.
Weight lifting? We don't need no stinking weights.
Somewhat later we did get a rather useful gadget that picked up the bales and carried them up so the first bottom hay-booster could do other work (thankfully), and later a rather complicated hayrack that picked up the bales, stacked them into 2x4 layers, which stacked into a huge 10-deep cube, and later when you drove it to the barn, tilted the *whole* cube up on end so you could stick it next to all the other cubes of square bales.
And this is why I work with computers for a living. Because otherwise, I would still be there.
You could have put it at the part you describe Fuchsia had you done that; but you didn't so I ended up having to make up a fuzzy image of her throughout the story.
Not cool bro, but then again I actually like the girlfriend I imagined better than Fuchsia so meh.
~Leonzilla
3724179
It was in there, but it just didn't read right, so after a few revisions didn't make it better, it got deleted.
3724183 hum, interesting. It was a bold decision to eliminate any from of description knowing that the result of that would be (at least in my case) not being able to commit a face or anything to the name not really knowing the character of Fuchsia until later in the story, so I wasn't sure what kind of appearance would suit the character.
3724303
I probably should have, being that some of the EqG characters aren't all that well-known.
That's one way where fanfics spoil us as writers--it's easy to get in the habit of not worrying about describing characters, since most of them are so well-known that we don't have to.
3725643 I know what you mean, many people even consider descriptions to be a detriment when they involve a well known character since is easy to see them as redundant text that the author shouldn't waste it's time writing and the readers would be wasting their time reading.
Like "why are you making me read about Fluttershy's face and coat like I wouldn't know what she looks like if you didn't! "
There is certainly a reason in skipping some redundant descriptions that's for sure; but descriptions are still valuable sometimes.
~Leonzilla
3728043
Something I should pay more attention to, for sure. Especially with a lesser character.
3444586
That last "gadget" sounds like a New Holland Bale Wagon. Knew a lot of folks that used them, but they left a mess and ruined the bales at the unload, which heightened the appeal of field accumulators (runs on secondary hydraulics behind the baler, drops single flats of 2X5 / 3X5).
5024805 Yep, sounds like it. Ours was a pull-behind, one of the neighbors had a self-propelled version. The key was to stop the whole thing about half-way through when you had a full flat, get out your hay hook, and change the orientation of the bales so you had a 'locking-layer' in the middle. That way when you put up the 'cube' (actually a rectangle with 8 bales to the layer, 10 layers tall) by raising the whole bed and backing up against the last 'cube' the locking layer would keep you from having eight stacks of ten bales each, which was a disaster waiting impatiently to happen.
FYI: This is the self-propelled version. It beat the holy (censored) out of three guys with a wagon and a pull-behind bale escalator. (but this version has cheater-pushers at the end, where we just had to gun the engine and pop forward so the bales would stay put)
The pure manual version is just two guys with hay hooks and a lot of strength on the wagon (below). We had a 'hay elevator' like this " <- Tractor -- Hay Elevator -- Wagon" which made stacking a heck of a lot easier than what you see here. (edit: Hey, I found one)
What you don't realize is that every bale you pick up, has to be put away. If you can't cheat and use the bale wagon to stack them in cubes of 80, you put up an electric or gas-powered hay elevator to carry the bales up into the loft, where some poor sweating schmuck with a hay hook stacks them up to the roof in a building that can be well over 110 degrees. We used to go through about a gallon of water an hour. That New Holland hay wagon actually can run in *reverse* and spit out those 80 bales one at a time to go up the elevator (see below) although it helped to have somebody there to baby the mechanism or it would screw up bigtime.
5024810
I know exactly what you mean, I grew up doing this. I forgot to mention it. The problem with the New Hollands in our neck of the woods is we're in hill country with old mortise-and-tenon lofted barns. Couldn't stack higher than 6 flats on a wagon if it was going inside.
5024960 Oh, and then there's the winter where you're taking those bales *out* of the barn, loading them onto the pickup truck/tractor's trailer, then driving through the (censored) snow to where the (censored) bales get put so the (censored) cows who won't get out of the way can eat every (censored) day...
People ask me why I'm in IT support. That's most of the reason. Silage is most of the rest, topped off with milking cows.