pitch

verb, to move hay or grain from one place to another in a particular manner, a seasonal farm job

“I’ve heard Dad say that when they used to pitch hay into those big boxes that they jumped the hay.”

“We pitched hay, and we had to get out in the morning, early in the morning. I didn’t like that. We took turns. Somebody had to be way up in the mow, and somebody had to be on the barn floor.”

“Harvest time, I guess, I started going on thrashing gangs, and I’d be maybe twelve years old, and he’d be pitching on in the field, pitching the sheaves of wheat or grain onto the wagons, and you’d come down to the table, and there’d be tables set for about twelve men.”

“I remember one day in the haying time, our old hay loader broke down …. Pop was pitching a load of hay on, and all of a sudden this airplane came over us, and I was as high as the pilot, and it wasn’t that big a load of hay.”

“I didn’t know how to pitch hay. I sure learnt. Somebody’d pitch it up to the skaffel, and then I’d pitch it from the skaffel up to the top of the stack, and I couldn’t build a stack to save my life, have it all off to the side, probably then it’d eventually fall over.”

“It was a round piece of hay, and then you have to drive up beside it with the wagon and have to pitch it all on. It was a great thing, these hay loaders, because they picked it up, put it up on the wagon for you. You’d pitch it on a forkful at a time.”
“And then you get to the mow and you have pitch it off again.”
“And then you had to pitch it off again, yeah.”

“You’d have two or three guys on the bagger, one guy bagging grain. You always carried it most of the time on your shoulder to the granary and dumped it. You’d have two guys carrying, and you’d have two guys pitching on in the field and maybe three or four wagons going.”

“What does a thrashing machine do?”
“Oh, you know, you pitch the sheaves of grain into it, which in the Western pictures was a steam engine sitting out there, and a big drive belt going to it, and a wagon load of sheaves. And they’re pitching the sheaves in, and the straw’s blowing out one pipe, the thrashed grain’s coming out the other pipe.”