The Hay Bale Pyramid That Became a Landmark
A winter stack of round bales drew survey crews, a small-plane pilot and one very confused delivery driver to my back knoll.
It began as a practical thing. I had sixty round bales to stack before the first ice storm, and the only flat place on the property was the knoll behind the barn. I built a pyramid. Not on purpose. I just kept putting bales on top of bales until I ran out of tractor reach, and when I stepped back there it was, a perfectly respectable triangle of hay, ten bales tall.
By January it had a following. A neighbor mentioned it to the volunteer fire department, who started using it for directions. 'Turn at the pyramid,' they said, and the new guy took them literally and drove to Egypt, or as close as the county road would go. A UPS driver who had been delivering to my mailbox for six years called me in a panic from the lane, convinced I had constructed a monument overnight.
The surveyor came in February. He was updating section corners for the county and stood at the fence line for twenty minutes squinting through his instrument. I walked out and asked if I could help. 'That is on my map as a hill,' he said. I said it was a hill with a roof. He wrote something in his notebook that I suspect was a joke.
The funniest call was from a small-plane pilot at the regional airport, who left a message saying he had been using my pyramid as a visual checkpoint on approach, and could I please not feed it to the cows without a week's notice. I called him back and promised to give him warning. We agreed on a signal: three bales left on the west edge.
The cows, of course, did not honor the agreement. By March the pyramid had become a staircase and by April a bench, and by May it was a pile of straw the sparrows loved. I do not think the pilot ever forgave me. Folks on farm.FM like to say every ranch needs a landmark, and I answer that mine was good while it lasted and had the sense to leave before the grass came up.
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