"Making hay has always been hard work, just about the hardest work on a farm. Spanning 150 years, Steven R. Hoffbeck's The Haymakers tells a story of the labor and heartbreak suffered by five families struggling to make the hay that fed their livestock, a story not just about grass, alfalfa, and clover, but also about sweat and fears, toil, and loss. The Haymakers is the history of man's struggle with nature as well as man's struggle against machines. It relates the story of farmers and their obligations to their families, to the animals they fed, and the land they tended."--Jacket.