Soon changes came along and eggs were collected with a belt system in the new cage houses and collecting, washing and candling those eggs was done with an in-line system. Potatoes, once picked by hand in the oak splint baskets, also came into the modern age with mechanical harvesting.
They raised their own feed for the poultry and direct marketed their eggs and potatoes. They packed the potatoes in bulk for potato chips or into store packs and delivered them on regular routes with the eggs in the nearby city.
He went to the first agriculture college in the U.S., Delaware Valley College outside of Philadelphia. He graduated with a degree in animal husbandry and his goal was to have a farrow to finish operation.
However, he noted his dad was raising clover and plowing it under for a green manure crop for the nutrients it provided for the potatoes. Being an entrepreneur at an early age, he convinced his dad to let him bale it and take it to the auctions in the Lancaster area.
Alfalfa, mixed grasses and timothy soon followed. He made a good network of customers throughout the Amish country. Of course, the "hay bug" bit him and this was only the beginning of what today has become a large-scale forage operation. He farms 1,800 acres and of that 1,000 acres are devoted to hay.
In the early days, he used New Holland balers making standard bales of hay. First kicking the bales into hay wagons and off-loading with elevators into bank barns, he soon converted to palletizing the hay on wagons and with egg money built the first large hay barn and more have followed.
A member of the National Hay Association since 1984, he and his wife met a family from Oregon who in those years were building equipment to make baling and stacking hay a lot less back-breaking.
With the help of Stan Steffen, he saw the possibility that hay can be moved a lot easier by gathering the bales in a bale accumulator that traveled behind the baler. This was a lot safer on the rolling hills he farms. The hay was picked up and put on pallets right in the field on the flat-bed trailers and off-loaded with forklifts at the farm.
Exporting hay soon was in the picture. Living only 70 miles from East Coast ports, he was contacted to see how he might be able to fill containers of hay going to Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Caribbean islands and other countries by getting a denser bale in the containers.
Once again talking with fellow NHA member Stan Steffen, who was building compressing systems on the West Coast, he soon was up and running a double compressing operation to fill those orders. It is 35 years later and the business continues to grow.
As new members, his wife remembers talking to NHA member Tom Creech that first year and he gave sound advice: "It is important to take the time to meet with your customers, whether it is here in the U.S. or in another country." He currently serves on the board of directors for the National Hay Association, is chairman for the hay judging contest committee and sits on the export committee representing the East.
He received the NHA "Claude E. Riley" Award in 1999. He is also current president of the Pennsylvania Forage and Grasslands Council, a member of the American Forage and Grasslands Council and other agricultural organizations.
He serves his community as a township supervisor and is in his third six-year term. A member of the Heidelberg United Church Christ, he and his wife have two sons who are also active in the farm business.
Along with their two daughters-in-law and five granddaughters, they are still making a lot of hay, hopefully with a little more pay. Your 2012 Haymaker of the Year is David Fink from Germansville, Pennsylvania. FG
—From National Hay Association publication Hay There!, January 2013
PHOTO
TOP RIGHT: David Fink, "2012 Haymaker" winner with Gary Freeburg, committee chairman. Photo courtesy of National Hay Association.
