Valley of 10,000 Haystacks

Driving over the Beaverhead Mountains it became immediately clear how the Big Hole Valley got its name. It’s a sprawling grassy basin, over sixty miles long and forty wide, sitting six thousand feet above sea level, and enclosed by the distant Anaconda and Pioneer ranges. One of the least populated regions in Montana, with more cows than people, this is cattle country on the grandest scale.

The Big Hole is famous for its extreme climate …the winters are long and bitterly cold ... and for the quality of its summer grass and the cattle that graze it. And that's why cameraman Dawson Dunning and I were here for the BBC’s Wild West series. We had come to film the annual haymaking season, and this being the Big Hole, that job is done in a uniquely Wild West way.

The first Europeans arriving here in the early 1800’s realised that ranching could only be sustained if they cut and stored huge amounts of grass to feed their animals through the long winter.

In the dry mountain air, the hay could be left outside uncovered without rotting … and the bigger the stacks the longer they last. So the ranchers here made their stacks big …really BIG!! One hundred feet long, thirty high each contained over thirty tons of hay that could remain fresh for several years. In its heyday, the Big Hole had another name; The Valley of 10,000 Haystacks!

Building these giant hay-stacks requires some very particular machinery and know-how, and it's something of a dying art with only a few ranches continuing to harvest the grass in this manner. Luckily for us, local photographer Cindy Baldauf was on hand to help with the shoot, and soon we were heading to the Hirschy Ranch where hay-stacking had already started.

“I've got no problem with ya’ filming, so long as you don't get in the way” was ranch boss Heidi Hirschy’s only instructions to us. At first glance the whole process looked chaotic … but it soon became obvious that there was method in the madness!

The centre of activity is a huge machine called a ‘beaverslide’. Looking like a cross between a zoo cage and a medieval catapult, it comprises a thirty-foot high ramp leaning up against an enormous square framework. The ramp is fitted with a moveable shelf that can be pulled up to the top of the cage by a complex of cables.

Around this massive structure several vehicles known as ‘buck-rakes’, with large forward-facing scoops, buzzed around the field like whirling-gig beetles, collecting up huge piles of cut grass and loading them onto the beaverslide shelf.

When enough has been piled onto the lifting mechanism, an ancient winch pulls the shelf up the ramp and flings the hay into the cage.

This process was repeated over and over again until the cage was filled with several tons of compacted hay. Then a powerful tractor would drag the beaverslide and cage forwards a few feet before it is once again filled with hay … and so the stack slowly grows until all the hay in the vicinity had been collected and an almighty ‘loaf of hay’ had been created.

The harvesting machinery seems straight out of the world of Mad Max. The buck-rakes are old trucks, stripped down to their bare bones and driven in reverse to keep the dry hay as far away as possible from the hot engines. With the bodywork removed, the suspension, peddles, wires, drive shafts and chassis were all exposed. Some were very old, rusted in parts and personalised with graffiti … they each had their own, very individual character. Over the next few days we tried to record every detail of the harvest, filming the ranch team as they worked their dawn-to-dusk shifts. They were the most accommodating and friendly crew, putting up with our constant requests and allowing us to repeatedly get in their way without complaint.

It was a genuine privilege to meet Heidi, her family and the rest of the stacking team and spend time with them. During our short stay in the Big Hole Valley, Dawson and I certainly caught a glimpse of the true pioneer spirit in this remote corner of western Montana.