I'd bet it was loose hay as baling wasn't around until the late 1800s and not widespread until the 1930s.
Mowing the hay, waiting for the sun to toast it to a golden brown, raking it into winrows, hand forking into stacks, then loading it onto a wagon and offloading in the barn, is a tedious process.
Add typical summer weather, with thunderstorms popping up with little or no warning, and it becomes a very hectic ballet. Putting hay away, a little on the wet side to beat a thunderstorm, is quite common, even with modern machinery that sped up the process considerably.
We always tried to spread greenish hay out over the hay mow, but that doesn't mean it will be completely dry before the the next load arrives, because of humidity and lack of circulation in the barn.
Oh, and two ton of hay ain't shit.... yet.
