Please help -how to maintain 20 -30 acres?

[donn12]

I am seriously considering going from our 6 acre place to one on 20 -30. I am assuming that hay is a very time consuming deal which requires expensive equipment etc. I also work ful time so I only have a couple of days a week to atrtend to the land. So the question is how do you take care of this much property? We may get some horses in the future. I am guessing I would need a 45hp tractor or so but I have no idea if that is right and what else it would take (also the cost)? I hope it requires some neat toys but I hope they are not too expensive!

 

[Egon]

First plan what you want to do; then start looking for the proper gear that will do the job.

After finding out costs reconsider what you need to do and go look at some more gear. Looking is fun!

 

[schmism]

whats the goal?

raise a few head of cattle? horses? sheep, goats, alpaca, lama, pigs, or just chickens and dogs?

whats the 20-30 acers? tillable? lease to fellow adajacent farmer? pasture? or non-tillable timber?

timber takes virtually no care but if you want to maintain your own pasture your looking at needing considerable more equipment.

are there fellow farmers in the area that cut hay on shares? if you dont need it all the hay then why invest in the equipment if all you need is half or perhaps none at all.

You should look at defining what some goals would be before spending a lot on equipment you may never make full use out of. (or worse buy something to small and have to sell it and get something larger just a year or 2 down the road)

 

[MossRoad]

I agree with the others....

You have to decide what tasks you want to accomplish and plan from there. For instance, we bought 20 acres back in 1989. It had two fields and an established woods. Our goal was to re-forest one of the fields, maintain the existing woodlot and let the other field go natural for a while to see what we would get. We needed to mow between the newly planted trees two to htree times a year and we also needed to cut in a road through a high bank on the highway.

So we bought a used IH2500b tractor loader for 5K, a brush hog and a box blade (cheap units). I used that to cut in my road and spread gravel from a pocket I located on our property with the help of a soil map. Then we had slag brought in for a roadway, which I spread also. I then used it to mow between the trees for 10 years until they were established.

After that, all the big jobs were done, so we bought our little 25HP tractor to mow trails with, drag firewood out of the woodlot and maintain our 1+ acre urban lot doing mowing, landscaping and snow removal. We sold the big tractor. The 25hp does everything we need.

So you can see by my example that the size of the tractor needed is not dictated by the acreage but the tasks that need to be done.

 

[chh]

One thing you should consider in you planning, you don't have to do the hay yourself in most areas in my experience. You can hire it done or as mentioned get it done on shares or even sell the hay standing(uncut) to someone else. Either way can be a lot less expensive in $$ and time than doing it yourself especially if you don't really know what you are doing. If the property you are looking at has good fencing, leasing it out to someone for cattle or horses could bring in some $ and help keep the grass down. If you know anything about cattle, you could by a set of stocker calves in the spring, graze them until the fall or until the grass dries up(in a bad summer). With a proper stocking rate and heathy calves you would only(most likely) need to mow the property once in the summer and once in the late fall and most years make money on the calves in the weight gain. I know several older men that use this or something similar with cull cows to maintain their property.
Personally the one thing I would want to avoid is getting in the situation/mindset that it is a 30 acre yard that has to be mowed constantly. All that will do is cost you money.

 

[QRTRHRS]

So you can see by my example that the size of the tractor needed is not dictated by the acreage but the tasks that need to be done.

That and the soil conditions. I have to admit that I messed up on tractor size. When I downsized to a smaller property and went from two tractors to one, I wanted that one tractor to have some good front end loader lift capacity. Of the former tractors, one was 40HP and the other 108. I went to 75.

Oh, it does what I need but it is too heavy for my ground when it gets wet and I make a mess at times. Guess I should have spoken to my new neighbors first, hint, hint.

 

[texasjohn]

There are dozens of threads that will help you.... your best investment is to read, read, read.... not just the newest threads, but use the search engine and look at older threads too... their information does not decay with time... excellent information for you is there... FREE!

 

[whistlepig]

I am seriously considering going from our 6 acre place to one on 20 -30. I am assuming that hay is a very time consuming deal which requires expensive equipment etc. I also work ful time so I only have a couple of days a week to atrtend to the land. So the question is how do you take care of this much property? We may get some horses in the future. I am guessing I would need a 45hp tractor or so but I have no idea if that is right and what else it would take (also the cost)? I hope it requires some neat toys but I hope they are not too expensive!

We moved from a seven acre place to twenty acres. You are not going to get enough hay from twenty acres and still pasture horses. We have four horses here. Hay equipment is very expensive. And putting up hay is hard labor. For twenty acres it would not be worth your time and expense. It is much cheaper for us to buy the hay than the cost of maintaining the equipment and hiring the labor. I would love to bale my own hay. It's just not worthwhile for us.

 

[MossRoad]

We moved from a seven acre place to twenty acres. You are not going to get enough hay from twenty acres and still pasture horses. We have four horses here. Hay equipment is very expensive. And putting up hay is hard labor. For twenty acres it would not be worth your time and expense. It is much cheaper for us to buy the hay than the cost of maintaining the equipment and hiring the labor. I would love to bale my own hay. It's just not worthwhile for us.

Hmm... a friend of mine has 11 acres and three horses. She has a deal with a neighbor of hers. He cuts the hay several times a year and takes half. She keeps the remaining half. She has plenty for her three horses and even sells some of the extra. She didn't have to buy any haying equipment and doesn't have to buy hay. Worked out well for her.

 

[Western]

You have got allot of good advice so far, I think it all depends on you.

There is no hurry unless you want to hurry, you can let the land lay dormant for the wild life and an occasional "hike" through your place, that's what my neighbor does and he is content with it (16 acres), or you can build a sub division, or anywhere in between.

My advise is to take your time on the expensive decisions. Do you need this tractor or that one? it would be cheaper , when you need one, to rent a type you think you like and try it on for a day.
I have had tractors from 20 hp to 150 hp, now I only have 16 acres and found a 38 hp is 4x4 is perfect for my small place since most of it is trees.

One important thing I would consider is what ever you do, make sure it is something you will enjoy before you spend the big bucks on a project. animals require good fence, ec ttra.

No matter what you do, the work on your "farm" will be more satisfying than work at the "office", so the time you have to devote to it will usually have its own rewards.