New Hay Equipment!

An efficient line of hay baling equipment that has saved us time and labor. A most worthy investment!

In any business one of the biggest challenges is justifying large expenses, especially during the start-up years when the list of purchases is already significant and money always seems tight. A growing farm, especially one as diversified as ours, is no different in trying to address these challenges. Even when the need is justified, the money may not always be available, and prioritizing purchases is crucial to maintaining a healthy bottom line.

When we purchased our farm, the previous owners were growing and cutting their hay for both personal use and for sale, and we decided to continue this enterprise since the fields were already being used for this purpose. In a previous blog we discussed the challenges that we faced using the antiquated equipment we purchased from the previous owners (in efforts to keep initial costs low), including frequent equipment breakdown and the tremendous physical labor needs. Hay season was always frustrating and inefficient, and it was primarily due to our fleet of hay equipment.

Even with a “kicker,” there is still have plenty of work to do. Each bale is unloaded from the wagon and transferred to the hay elevator to be transported up to the hay loft. Two people on the ground loading and two people in the loft unloading is ideal.

After participating in a Beginner Farmers course through the Cornell Cooperative Extension and meeting a seasoned hay farmer, we were given the advice and encouragement to ditch our old equipment and upgrade to a “kicker”, a more modern style hay baler that will not only bale hay, but send it through an elevator-style chute and “kick” it directly into a wagon. This kind of equipment eliminates the need for one (or more) people to run after the hay baler to pick up each hay bale off the field and toss is into a hay wagon.

Luckily, we were able to find this equipment for sale not too far from us, which we promptly purchased and arranged to be brought back to the farm. We used this equipment in May during the first hay cutting season of the year, and the amount of time and labor it saved us is inexplicable.

While it was a significant investment, upgrading our equipment was a wise decision that freed up a significant amount of time, and decreased the level of labor and frustration during hay season. We regret that we were not wise enough to forgo the cheaper and dated equipment earlier to make this purchase from the start, but our “wrong” decision is also what gives us tremendous appreciation for what we have now.