Am I to assume, with the phrase "well, gosh it just went haywire," that the term haywire came from something associated with farming and bales of hay?

queproblema

Blame the Canadians. (Where's BRY2K?) hay·wire n.Wire used in baling hay. adj. Informal 1. Mentally confused or erratic; crazy: went haywire over the interminable delays. 2. Not functioning properly; broken. [From the use of baling wire for makeshift repairs .] Word History: Why should the word for something as functional and mundane as haywire have come to be applied to something that is not functioning properly or to a person who is crazy? It would seem a story of semantics gone haywire. Haywire is a compound of the words hay and wire, originally simply denoting wire used to bale hay or straw. The term is first recorded as a noun in a debate in the Canadian House of Commons (1917), so it is a Canadianism or, since it appeared soon thereafter in a U.S. publication, a North Americanism. We find an earlier (1905) attributive use in the phrase hay wire outfit, a term used contemptuously for poorly equipped loggers. What lies behind this term is the practice of making repairs with haywire. Haywire is found in other contexts with the general sense "makeshift, inefficient," from which come the extended senses "not functioning properly" and "crazy." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/haywire Jul 03 09, 10:22 PM

looney_tunes

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, haywire means "'poorly equipped, makeshift,' 1905, Amer.Eng., lit. 'soft wire for binding bales of hay,' from hay + wire. The extended sense being of something only held together with this, particularly said to be from use in New England lumber camps for jerry-rigging and makeshift purposes, so that haywire outfit became the term for a logging camp chronically ill-equipped and short on supplies. Its springy, uncontrollable quality led to the sense in go haywire (1929)." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=h&p=3 Jul 03 09, 10:22 PM