Sure, I can talk about this indefinately LOL. The farm has 40 acres of irrigated hayfield, which is about 30% alflalfa, and mixed grasses. We also have “worked up” some low ground, naturally subirrigated, with natural grass mix, some timothy, some orchard grass, etc, about 6 acres in all now. None of these fields had ever been hayed before, pretty rough. These grass fields are MY job entirely (other than mowing), and I small square it and pick it up by hand. DH doesn’t like small squares, but he has helped me pick them up as a thunderstorm was approaching!!! My tractor does not run our mower, it does not have back hydraulics, so he cuts these little grass fields for me in succession, as required. It takes about 20 minutes each, we cut a couple acres at a time there. He cuts the big fields the same, the amount we can manage in one session, the 40 acres we divide into 4 quadrants. Our equipment… we buy practically nothing “new”. We buy mostly older equipment, no computers, all mechanical. The DH is pretty handy with some of the work and upkeep. We came to this farm 15 years ago, with our 32 horse open station Kubota, which we bought to manage our previous farm in 1996. This is now “my” tractor, I use it for farm chores, and do the raking on the hayfields, DH refers to it as a “toy tractor”. It also works the small square baler (OLD) which we bought for $1500 when we first moved to this farm. We bought a new rotary rake a couple years ago, new, it was about $5000 I think. We bought an OLD JD 90 horse tractor, for $18,000 when we bought this farm, bought it from a friend- it was too big for their farm. It has health issues, but is very dependable and the DH both loves it, and curses it. Our mower is a discbine (highly recommended). We had a sickle bar mower previously, it was hopeless once we got these fields in shape and producing adequately. The discbine was used, we bought it from a dealer, I think it was $11,000 but we traded in the sickle mower for part of that. After doing square bales for the first couple years, we switched to doing round bales for our main crop, small rounds, 600 lbs. Bought that baler new. It’s fully manual, no computers. You can pay $60,000 or more for the fancy new ones, that do “everything” for you and “anyone” could operate them. This one, we paid half that, new, the DH operates it, you have to weave over the windrow as it picks up the hay, and stop at the correct moment, and manually apply the twine with the lever… so it does take some skill to operate. The DH taught himself how, and he makes nice bales with it. It takes a bit of practice to get it right, but it’s quick to get things baled, and if it rains before you can pick up, it doesn’t matter- the rain just runs off the bales without penetrating much. Just leave them out on the field to dry the outside again. We’ve replaced the belts in it once, did that job ourselves. I help. He figures out how.
If you have 10 acres or so, and a tractor that will do the job already, you need a mower, a rake, and a small square baler, all that are in “functional” state. The rake and the baler are pretty cheap to pick up. The mower, maybe not so cheap, if it’s a discbine, they seem to hold their value more. With older equipment, you NEED someone who can do some mechanical work on them, every now and again. And for it to not be completely ruined junk when you buy it. To operate a decent mower, you need back hydraulics on the tractor, and a tractor of a decent size (not my little 32 horse).
Yes, I imagine that waiting for an outside haying operator and watching the weather go to shit as your crop gets overmature would be a major PITA. We see this happen around here, with a few of the smaller parcels in town (yes, we have hayfields in “town” LOL) who do not have their own equipment. And then you only “get” a percentage of the hay.
Good luck with equipment shopping! Farm auctions are always interesting, but you have to have someone who knows machinery so that you don’t end up buying worthless JUNK. If you buy from a dealer, you will pay more, and at least some idea that maybe the machinery works (but trust NO ONE!!!). We bought another big tractor from a local dealer a few years ago. The dealer guaranteed that it was in good condition, they had been “all over it” to check it out etc. When we got it home, it was overheating immediately. DH found that the previous owner had crammed cardboard in front of the radiator, for winter use. The dealer who had claimed that they had “gone all over it”, had FAILED to find cardboard - ie, they had NOT done what they claimed to do. Also, the air conditioning in the cab was not working, and it cost us another $5000 to get it working. So do not trust these arseholes. The dealership was sold to a new owner right after we bought this tractor, and they are even worse than the previous owner. If you buy a tractor with a cab on it to do haying, it MUST have functional air conditioning, because otherwise it is an unbearable sauna in there, to the extent that the operator will get heat exhaustion, even with the doors open, when haying. We also needed this tractor to do our winter driveway snow clearing on our 1 km long driveway, and the heater works just fine.
