anyone hand bale?

[Mr.Hoppes]

anyone here hand bale their crops? I have found a set of plans online to do just that, bale hay/ straw , alfalfa, tall grass. I am intending on making one soon as a neighbor has given me the crop of mix hay alfala that is directly behind our 1 acre. He mows i I pick it up. Any comments would be helpful. And yes I have the time and manpower for it. THe fact is it beats paying some one else who you don't know. My neighbor was letting someone else come in cut and bale and sell at his profit for no consideration. Now neighbor wants me to have it and my goats will love it over the winter when natual browse which I bring them is in short demand. It just means more work for better more natural feed and less cost and is grown in my sight and without chemicals or outside pollutants. Great neighbor , lots O' Work. If it were my land I would invest in a machine to do the work but like to think I'd try to do it by hand if or when posssible.

[ericjeeper]

Just pile it on top of some pallets and tarp it over tightly.Once it is dry. Let it air dry in the field

[agmantoo]

Near a tree farm I have in SC I see people baling pine needles with hand balers. I looked at the design of the baler and it was simple and effective. I see a small crew of kids and women sometimes and it appears that they can bale 125 to 150 bales in a half day or less.

[Farmerwilly2]

Would you share the plans you found?

[country_wife]

DH hand bales. He uses those storage containers like you find at walmart..sort of a big tupperware thing...to pack/shape the bales, then ties them in baling twine and that's it. The bales are smaller than ordinary bales, but it works for us.

[agmantoo]

Here is the type hand baler I saw in SC
http://texaspinestraw.tamu.edu/baling.html

[DavidUnderwood]

agmantoo, thats a good one.
Simple, just my style!

[js2743]

i think i would just shock it like they did in the old days or just haul it in loose. and put it in the barn or some type of building or buy a tarp and cover it that way, hand bailing hay would be crazy. you can put lots of loose hay in a building just keep it stomped down as you place it in there.

[agmantoo]

Baling pine needles is more lucrative than one may first imagine. The wholesale price for the small bales is around $2.50 each. I know a retired couple that says they sell $400/week worth from their front yard. They charge $4/bale and often run out since they work about 3 each 1/2 days per week baling.

[myheaven]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! We have been talking about making something like this for all the black berry leaves and grasses we cut around here. we wanted to save it somehow for the bucks (goat) and the rabbits for winter feed. The pile method doesnot work with all my chickens running about. they just lay on it and make a big poopy mess out of it. Now If I can get it made this winter .

Originally Posted by country_wife

DH hand bales. He uses those storage containers like you find at walmart..sort of a big tupperware thing...to pack/shape the bales, then ties them in baling twine and that's it. The bales are smaller than ordinary bales, but it works for us.

My DD's and I done this also this last summer. We only done a few but this method works real well if you only have a small area to cut and bale. We would cut two pieces of bailing twine and loop it down into the storage container and then fill it up with hay. Stomped down several times, and then tie it off with the twine. It made some really good little bales.

One time when I was a teenager a farmer up the road from us hired me and a cuz of mine to haul hay for him. We got to his farm and found out it was all loose hay. He pulled a trailer that had this old time hay rake attached to the back of it. It would pick up the loose hay and dump it on the back end of the trailer. We would rake it forward on the trailer. It wouldn't take long for us to have a trailer full and then we would take it to the corner of the field and dump it all in a big pile. He made us pile it as high as we could get it. By the time we got it all out of his field we had a heck of huge pile of hay.

And thats all he done to his hay. The hay would pack down tight from its own weight and would be just like a giant round bale of hay. The rain couldn't penetrate down into it very deep. He then built a fence around it and throughout the winter he would just pull some good hay out from the center of it and pitch it over the fence to his cows.

I guess that's how the old timers done it and he didn't see any reason to change.

[clovis]

I saw an old timer with a homemade wooden contramption that sat vertically, and was bolted to the side of the barn.

He would go out and cut a swath by hand one day, and let it dry. Day two, same thing. By the time the first row was dry, he was raking it up, hauling to the barn, compacting it into the contraption, and tying it off. When he got the cutting up and running, he spent half the day cutting, a few hours raking, and several hours baling. I think he was using a dirt tamp to compact the hay.

He said this was the best method for him....he never got too tired from cutting or raking, and the chance of rain hitting his drying hay was slim.

BTW, when I was a kid, my dad used to cut the tall grass around the fences with a weed eater. I used to gather it up after it dried, and kept it for the rabbits in the winter time. I kept it in 5 gallon buckets....it was the only container I had at the time, LOL.

Clove