As a young fellow I started 'helping' by standing on the front ladder rack and driving the horses from stook (we called them sheaves and stooks)to stook as my father and uncle loaded the wagon.
The horses pretty will knew what to do without me telling them and when i realized that by the next year I was put to work loading the wagon as both my uncle and dad pitched the sheaves on.
They could place many from the ground and I just had to rearrange some in the middle and near the top of the load.
By that time there was a JD 'B' on the wagon and my younger brother or my cousin driving it from stook to stook.

An hour or so drive would put me in Amish country and lots of fields that would look like the one in the pictures.

Think how many were needed to harvest that way compared to the tonnes of grain produced by 1 guy on a combine today