Small Hay Field Idea to cut?

U ritght rod. Hard and LONG. AND, shes only working in around a 100ft sq area or less.
Butt, That oughta keep her school girl figure in shape lol

No.

You have more inportant things to do.

Let the farmer pay you some to take care of your 5 acre hay field.

Those string trimmers on wheels are nice for trimming around your farm site, but are not built for mowing a 5 acre field.

The mini bales are a neat idea, hand baler is a lot of work to make and use, can make you some money but you will use perhaps a 1/2 acre of hay, what of the other 4.5 acres?

Cute idea, but no, it is not at all practical, it won't work out well. You will not get 5 acres cut with a string trimmer, much less get to collecting and baling any of the hay.

Continue to rent out the grass, and work on your stuff you need to work on. There will be plenty for you to do, don't mess up the deal in place that brings you a bit of money already. Focus on the real work that needs to be done.

Paul

I dont think cutting 5 acres worth of hay by hand is realistic. The weather is too crazy and you wont have enough time. Also you are talking about probably 500 bales of hay for the season ( assuming 2 cuttings) that is an enormous amount for a homemade, hand baler. I agree with Rambler that 1/2 acre is about right....maybe a full acre if you were extremey ambitious with time to kill.

If I lived a little closer I would come out and do it for you and split the bales. Oh well, I'm sure theres plenty of farmers in your neck of the woods that'll be glad to do it.

I know this isn't Germany, but if these guys were close by I'd be trying to get them to bail my straw and charge admission for people to come watch:

http://www.wimp.com/bailingstraw



Do the easy and get a local farmer to bale for you and work out a deal that's good for both. It will give you time to plan for future baling and you can cross that bridge when you come to it.

sorry, I'm having all kinds of problems getting this video to embed.

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Video does not exist.

First things first. Talk to the farmer and see if you can get it baled on shares. Just forget the whole "5 acres with a weed whacker and making handmade bales" thing. Just trust me, forget it. Your main concern is that hay in the mow that you say is rotting. If it's actually rotting, then that implies the roof is leaking, which means the moisture is rotting the barn away as you read. If that's the case, fix the roof NOW. I've removed a barn full of rotted hay before, by hand, and it's no fun at all. Fix the roof, get the wet hay out ASAP. If the roof isn't leaking and the hay isn't wet, then you need to evaluate the hay that's there. If it's baled hay, you have by your estimate 30 tons of "mulch". You may well have 30 tons of fairly decent bedding or even feed. I don't care if it is 40 years old, it's still good for bedding livestock and if you put it down and it's been well kept I promise you the stock will eat some of it with no problems. So evaluate the hay ASAP and either get it out if it's wet or find a buyer. Landscapers and road building crews need hay/straw for mulch. Considering real straw runs $3-6.00 a bale in northern NY, if you can even FIND real straw, you may have a potential gold mine in the mow. Muclh hay is worth at least half a buck a bale, same for bedding.

You have a long road ahead of you. Take care of the important stuff, the roof, first. Worry about making 5 acres of grass into boutique mini-bales later.

If you don't have animals yet, let the guy who has been taking the hay off keep doing it for this year. Get the barns ready for animals and hay and then decide what you want to do.

Trying to do that acreage by hand when you aren't used to it is going to be an entire summer's worth of work, and when you get done you'll have junky hay, anyway. And that's if you get it done (I doubt you would finish it because of the time it would take).

Let it slide this year, and get everything else that needs doing done first.

Good luck with the new place!

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-Northern NYS

Our hay man does square bales for us at $1.25 a bale and we then sell the bales for $5-7.00 ea. Someday we will have our own mower/conditioner, hay rake and baler but its hard to beat the price we pay and no way am I going to waste my time hand cutting 5 acres. Its enough of a work out trying to beat the weather loading the bales onto the hay wagon and getting them into the mow.

We just finished our baling this weekend and we had to get all the bales under cover as rain was coming.....its tiring I can tell you and in this picture your looking at out southern pasture which is about 8 acres all told (its not all in the picture). Now imagine doing all that by hand and hoping the weather holds.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

I wish I had a LARGE 5 acre field to make into hay. I have about 3 acres....and if I had to hand cut, rake and bale it it would soon become a gigantic 3 acre field. That would be soooo much work. I honestly think that if you aren't living there and have no animals yet that need it, just let someone else cut it into hay and pay you to take it. I'd focus my efforts on those other things that need done. Now is the perfect time to get that field in shape to make good. Could it need to be reseeded/overseeded? Fertilized?. Mowed to eliminate weed?. Concentrate on that, then when you do move in, you'll hit the ground running.