Reminded me of my childhood in Serbia, western neighbour of Romania, where we used to have same hay stacks [1], but now those are very hard to see, since modern methods prevailed for hay collection and transportation.
Not sure tbh, why this thing is called Romanian in first place.
Well now that I know, I think you should pay a licence fee for using our intellectual property. Please take an appointment to the Romanian embassy in Belgrade. Your money will help us develop even more the haystack technique.
I remember building those on my grandma's farm ~30 years ago. The adults woud throw hay to the top and us children would pack it down by walking on it in circles around the pole.
Another thing she would store for the winter were whole corn plant stems, arranged in a teepee-like structure around a tree trunk. The empty space between the trunk and the corn made a favorite hiding place for both us the children, as well as her chickens.
While reading the article, I was also wondering if this particular type of haystack is really uniquely Romanian. Although nowadays you have a much greater chance of seeing these in Romania, where there is a lot of hilly/montainous terrain which is not suited to the mechanical contraptions that spit out hay rolls (plus arguably in Romania there are more poor farmers who can't afford mechanical contraptions for their hay, or have plots so small that using a mechanical contraption is not worth it).
These are not unique to Europe either. We have these all over Nepal as well. It's still the dominate method for storing hay. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a "modern" haystack!
Reminds me of my summer holidays which I spend on my grandparents' farm in Bosnia. It was so boring there, that I welcomed the manual and hard work on the fields.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=stogovi+sena