Hurley Hay

A Monday Morning Memoir by Bruce Whistance

The hay field on Zandhoek Road was all cut, tedded, raked, and baled. The two-string square bales were all ready for loading and hauling back to John Kaufman's barn on Hurley Mountain Road. It was late Saturday and rain was forecast for Monday. I was working for Johnny helping with his haying that Saturday. At the end of a long day in the hay field, I was speaking with Johnny about the plan to finish bringing in the hay. He declared, “It's going to rain on Monday, and we don't work on Sunday.” I offered helpfully, “I don't mind working on Sunday so I could load the bales and drive them back to the barn myself.” He then replied firmly, “If you bring in the hay tomorrow, you would be working for me, and we don't work on Sunday. And if God wants it to rain on the hay then it will get rained on.”  I was concerned because if rained-on hay is not again dried fully, mold and mycotoxin can grow which puts livestock health at risk. Furthermore, baled wet hay can combust due to the temperature increase caused by microbial action, creating risk of a barn fire. Happily, the Monday weather was a very light sprinkling and the bales dried before we loaded them the following week.

Beginning in the very early 1950s, John Kaufman and his wife Anna operated a dairy farm on Hurley Mountain Road for a stretch of over twenty years, and he was very active in community historical and charity organizations.  When dairy farming waned in the area, Johnny became a professional carpenter specializing in the restoration of colonial buildings. He had gained valuable experience caring for his own colonial-period stone house and his original Dutch colonial barn. He worked at his construction business for over thirty years retiring in  2002 at the age of 78.  Owners of early Hurley homes were fortunate to have such a skilled craftsman working on their historic homes for which Hurley is so famous. Johnny was a sociable and multifaceted person. During the nearly sixty years that I knew him, I always admired his principles, honesty, knowledge, and work ethic.  Most of all I loved speaking with him and hearing him launch into a story that provided his unique insight into the topic of conversation.  He was an avid square dancer and well-versed in traditional New England square dance music.    When my wife Gail and I started playing for square and contra dances in the area, we were pleased to spend more time with him at dances and traditional music events.

John Kaufman appeared to be “forever young.” It almost seemed that everyone else was aging faster than Johnny. Hard work no doubt contributed to his health and robustness. The entire community was devastated when he and Anna were both killed in a tragic automobile accident at the intersection of Wynkoop Road and Route 209 on September 22, 2013.

My employment as a hired farm hand began one day unexpectedly when Johnny knocked on my parents’ door one summer morning and asked if they would allow him to offer me a job helping to bring in the hay. He thought I was big enough to take his pickup truck and work by myself loading and hauling hay bales that were ready for pickup in the hay fields around Hurley. My parents said that I was only fourteen years old and didn't have a driver's license.  Johnny assured them that if I was working for him then I was farming, and I would not need a driver's license for farming. I already had experience haying on a couple of other farms, and Johnny knew I could handle the bales. In fact, I usually used two hay hooks, one in each hand in order to carry two bales, or used two hands for one bale. But the thought of driving a truck at fourteen years of age was the most exciting. My parents agreed to the arrangement, and I eagerly accepted the job. Driving that pickup around Hurley and down Main Street  was a thrill not soon forgotten. The hardest part of the job was tossing the bales on top of the nearly fully loaded truck. Normally there were one or more farm hands on top of the load catching and placing the bales. Working by myself, I had to both drive the truck around the field, stop, hook the bales, and toss them up to the top of the load. I'd then have to climb to the top of the load of bales and secure them. After a day of haying when I’d finally get home,  my muscles ached all over.

Farmers had been making hay in Hurley for centuries using the technology of the period.  Baling the hay was a big improvement over handling loose hay as had been done until the twentieth century.  It would not have been possible for me to load and loft loose hay by myself, especially using a team of horses as in the historic photos of haying on the Wynkoop-Warren farm.

In the early 1960s, when the dairy farm next door to my family home went the way of so many other small farms and fell idle, its tall silo was no longer needed. The Saxe family who owned the farm agreed to let Johnny take the wood-stave silo. Not one to shrink from hard work, Johnny accomplished the feat working by himself. He climbed the outside of the silo and loosened all the hoops holding it together. He then said that he would wait for the wind to take it down. The wind cooperated a few days later on New Year's Eve. Amazingly, very few of the tongue-and-groove wood staves were damaged when it came crashing to the ground. Johnny never rebuilt the silo, and last I knew, the parts were all still stored in his old Dutch barn on Hurley Mountain Road.

Many folks have seen the massive 12-foot bluestone slab in front of the Hurley Library on Main Street, distinguished by four deep grooves worn into it from metal-clad wagon wheels.  Few know how it got there. It was part of the Ulster and Delaware Stone Plank Road that fell out of use in 1912 after serving for many decades as a main route for bluestone wagons carrying stone from the quarries in West Hurley and Glenford to the stone yards along Rondout Creek. This huge stone was one of two that bridged Keator Brook near the end of Hurley Mountain Road. The stone was cast aside when a culvert was installed at the brook crossing. Johnny was a strong supporter of local history being a charter member of the Hurley Heritage Society and the Dutch Barn Preservation Society. One day in deep winter when the Hurley Flats were covered in snow and ice, Johnny rigged a logging chain to the stone slab and dragged it with his 1951 John Deere tractor to where Town of Hurley workers could pick it up and move it to the Hurley town dump property for safekeeping.  In 1976, to  honor the Bicentennial, it was moved to Main Street where it has been on display ever since. A plaque identifies it as a “section of roadbed” which strikes me as a rather uninspired description of a 2000+ pound stone that once carried horse-drawn bluestone wagons  across a rushing Keator Brook.

In more recent years, Johnny and his wife Anna were by far the most loyal listeners at the “Folk-n-Fiddle” jam sessions at the Senate House in Kingston. There, local musicians would gather on Wednesdays at noon to play and sing together under the trees. Johnny never passed up a chance to enjoy his favorite music.  He loved to tell the story about one Friday when his truck was loaded with plywood and lumber in preparation for a roofing job on Monday.  In a burst of spontaneity, Johnny decided it would be nice to have a square dance in his friend's field on Saturday night. So he hired a caller and a fiddler and hammered together a dance floor in the field using the supply of roof sheathing and framing lumber from his truck. Dancers were invited, and a square dance was held on the impromptu floor. After the dance, Johnny dismantled the floor and reloaded  his truck. Come Monday the temporary dance floor became someone's roof. As far as I know, the owners never found out their roof had been, for one rollicking Saturday night, a square dance floor. The shoe and boot prints are forever hidden beneath the new shingles.

As a grade school kid from Hurley Mountain I would frequently play with other Hurley Mountain Road kids like Henry Paul, Donny Cashdollar, and the Finch brothers John and Bruce. Johnny’s Cow Herd's waterfall was a frequent destination, and we often would run around in his yard. Near the end of his life, when Johnny reflected on us enjoying his property, this is what he had to say, “I'd rather have a bunch of children running around in my yard than have perfect grass growing in it.”

The other kids and I called Johnny’s waterfall “Coward’s Falls.”  The story was that if you did not climb to the top of the  falls and hang over the edge to look down at the floor of the gorge, then you were a “coward.”  However, as explained to me by Johnny, the actual name is “Cow Herd’s Falls.”  When the Hurley Flats were dairy pastures, herds of cows would be attracted to the shade and coolness of the narrow gorge on a hot summer day. It seems that over time, the name “Cow Herd’s Falls” morphed into “Coward’s Falls.” Confusion over the name of Kaufmans’ falls persists to this day.

For years and years Cow Herd’s Falls was used as a shooting range. We young boys in the neighborhood all had a big box of spent brass cartridge casings that we would pick up. Johnny tried various ways to discourage the shooters, but they persisted. The final straw was one day when Johnny found a human silhouette target riddled with bullet holes propped up in front of the waterfall.  Johnny posted a no trespassing sign until he positioned large boulders to limit the space for cars to pull in.  He landscaped the floor of the gorge, planting flowers and adding a bench to create a relaxing space for enjoying the waterfall. Johnny said he wanted to make the area nice to keep people from abusing it.  For many locals it provides a scenic destination and shady rest stop for bicycle rides along Hurley Mountain Road. The cows were certainly wise to pick this location for their midday respite.

Johnny was a master story-teller. I enjoyed his insightful, humorous, and witty stories for the nearly sixty years that he was my neighbor. During the decades that I knew John Kaufman he would often stop his important work to tell one of his great stories. One time as he was driving Gail and me from a square dance, he actually pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine so he could concentrate on the story he was telling. I can say with confidence that Johnny was an important influence on my becoming a memoirist!

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