Bud Moore doesn’t have to worry any more about trying to make a stock car last until the end of a 500-mile NASCAR race. What concerns him now is trying to make a stockpile of hay last the rest of the winter.
And just like when there was more race left than car, there is more winter than hay for his 75 cows. The legendary car owner peered out the windshield of his brand-new truck, brought home the day before, and gazed out upon a mostly empty barn. There was some hay stacked in one corner.
“We usually get 160 or 165 rows, ” Moore said. “This barn will be slam full. Well, as it turned out, we only got 97 rows. I’ve got 20 rows left. That’s all I’ve got.”
On the track, sometimes the team ran into just plain bad luck. It’s the same on a cattle farm. Mother Nature didn’t cooperate last summer.
“We never got the rain,” he said. “We fertilized and everything else, but we never got the rain and it just burned it up. I had this field over here and we finally got a little bit of rain and it got about 10 or 12 inches tall. We were going to cut that field again with a second cut. But all of the sudden, it got over a hundred degrees and it just fell over.”
He’ll have to buy some at about $75 per bale from another local farmer, but that still won’t be nearly enough.
“We’re going to have to take a trailer, I think,” he said, “and go down to the lower part of the state to see if we can find some.”
Other than the occasional hay shortages or other problems that come up on a farm, Moore and his wife, Betty, live a comfortable life far away from the speedways that made him so famous.
The 82-year-old decorated World War II hero is one of NASCAR’s founding fathers.
From his Spartanburg garage, Moore operated a NASCAR team for 37 years, winning two season championships and 63 races. He and driver Joe Weatherly took the Grand National title in 1962 and 1963. Moore was also a crew chief for Buck Baker in the 1957 championship.
Some of those who drove for Moore through the years were David Pearson, Fireball Roberts, Cale Yarborough, Donnie Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Geoff Bodine, Ricky Rudd, Morgan Shepherd and Dale Earnhardt.
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