Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

[misfitmorgan]

My own personal house elf....she is fascinated with the stairs.

As of Sunday night the new pasture is finished and the goats are living in the new pasture with a temporary truck topper shelter. They seem pretty happy and the best part, no one has jumped out. They have met the electric fence with our new fencer several times and have gained respect for it. The new fencer is no joke, we went with a Power Wizard PW1500. It maxes out our 7k volt fence tester with 2 ground rods. We will be adding a third ground rod when we add the next section of pasture which we are currently planning for. We also went and bought all the supplies for the new turkey and chicken fences. So those are next on the list but will be pretty quick.

We are looking at a small tractor a Ford NAA aka golden Jubilee, it's only 33HP and very old but has the original loader and everything is working, as well as it had a new paint job on the entire thing except the hood, fenders and grill a few years ago. The best part is it is only $2,800. We actually own a Ford 601 Workmaster which is 48hp so a littler bigger but it is currently a basket case. The steering is out of whack some place and the hydraulics need to be completely redone, DH has owned it for about 10yrs but it hasnt been working for the past 8yrs. We looked into having it repaired and found is the problem is the loader, which is much to heavy for the tractor and what wrecked the steering and hydraulics, so it would cost $1200 to fix it and we would have no loader. So the current plan is to likely buy this Jubilee this year and then buy a older 60hp tractor next year, so we have two tractor for making hay. Then we should be good for a couple years and if we need something bigger we will look at whats available. We do already own a 2 bottom plow, a disc, a harrow, a brush hog, a tiller, and a small square baler...so a tractor that can run those things is all we need atm.

 

[Baymule]

I love your house elf, adorable! We enjoyed our bottle lambs in the house, but were glad to transition them to the barn. We let them run around with baby diapers on, secured with blue painters tape. LOL They had a large dog crate with XL dog potty pads, which they pawed into a wad, then peed and pooped on the plastic tray. Not so adorable then! Haha

How exciting to get a tractor! Ours is a 23 horse, small but is invaluable to us. Neighbor Russel has big cab tractors and can be hired for big stuff. Your new to you tractor may be old, but it works and will be a huge help and that’s all that matters.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I love your house elf, adorable! We enjoyed our bottle lambs in the house, but were glad to transition them to the barn. We let them run around with baby diapers on, secured with blue painters tape. LOL They had a large dog crate with XL dog potty pads, which they pawed into a wad, then peed and pooped on the plastic tray. Not so adorable then! Haha

How exciting to get a tractor! Ours is a 23 horse, small but is invaluable to us. Neighbor Russel has big cab tractors and can be hired for big stuff. Your new to you tractor may be old, but it works and will be a huge help and that’s all that matters.

We have had house lambs and goats many times, when they start bouncing off the walls they go outside. Oddly though this is the first ever kid/lamb who has somehow house trained herself. She drinks her bottle then jumps in that bin with the straw and does her pee and poo, then jumps out, I have a potty pad on the bottom to absorb the pee. If it is not feeding time and she needs to go, she will go to carpet or fabric which since we have all solid flooring now except those stairs....I cut up some pieces of old carpet we had and put a potty pad under it. Then picked up my rugs lol. She has an old couch cushion for her goat couch because she kept wanting to get on my couch and since it's fabric.....you know what happened. She really is the best behaved house kid/lamb we have ever had. We have done the diaper thing many times and it's nice not to have to do it this time. Though I do have to change out the carpet every other day...good thing we saved most of the 1200sqft of carpet we ripped out. She will be moving outside soon though, we keep having freak weather where it is dropping to at or below freezing at night. So as soon as the weather gets it act together.

That's pretty much our thought, a small tractor is better then no tractor at this point. Since we have so much fencing planned this year and a barn to build budget friendly is what we need. We do plan to get that slightly bigger tractor next year as well so we should be ok. Honestly the 33hp tractor for the square baler is going to be pushing it but we have almost no incline on our hay field so it should do the job. We do however have a lot of bumps and ruts so we shall see how she goes.....need to buy it first lol.

 

[Bruce]

What is the PTO HP of the 33 HP tractor? I've found that to be the limiting factor on implements.

 

[misfitmorgan]

30.15hp is the official listed for the PTO.....this is a tractor from 1953 though so some of the ponies might have gotten out. It is still going to better for most things then our backs lol. We have a old small square baler that was ran behind a Ford 8N a few years ago, though it was a rough rough ride it got the job done so this tractor should be fine since overall a Ford 8N is 30HP, and 27.32np at the PTO when it was new.

We will definitely be getting a 60-75hp tractor next year if all goes well between then and now, so that we can do small rounds as we would like to switch to mostly small rounds. DH would work himself into the ground but at this point the less small squares we do the better. Ultimately I would like to end up doing nothing but large squares but you need a really big tractor for those balers like 175hp+ and we would need a lot of land to justify a tractor that size.

We have been hoping the 80 acrre tillable next to us and the 125 acres tillable across the road would be something we could have a chance to buy or rent...however we are now hearing rumors the 86yr old women who owns them has sold both on a private sale. There is 40 acres for sale around the corner from us which is a good price but it is just far enough away it wouldnt be super reasonable to put any livestock on it, the bottom 5 acres gets washed out most years, 4acres is trees, and 2 acres is the old homestead and barn. We have time and ultimately will likely be moving from michigan all together so maybe it's good we didnt get more land as it is at the top of the market pricing atm with most land going for over $2,500/acre.

We shall see what the future holds but for now as soon as the sales guys calls us back that tractor is sold.

 

[Bruce]

$2,500/acre would be cheap in a lot of places.

I think the 30 PTO will likely do the job. My 35 HP Mahindra is only 26 PTO so I had to go with the 5' flail, the 6' needs 30. Curiously an equivalent Kubota has about 30 PTO but my tractor can lift a fair bit more on the loader.

 

[Baymule]

$2500 per acre is CHEAP! But maybe the six feet of snow that comes with it and hangs around for months puts a damper on things....

 

[farmerjan]

Just one thing to think about with small round bales... You cannot really stack them. They are very difficult to deal with. Had a guy here that used to make them and he said he wished he had never gotten that small round baler. They were the equivalent to small squares at 50-70 lbs. They do not shed rain so have to be kept in like small squares... and you can't stack them like the squares with them having no flat sides so won't stay in place. And you cannot feed out sections or flakes because they are rolled....

 

[misfitmorgan]

$2,500/acre would be cheap in a lot of places.

I think the 30 PTO will likely do the job. My 35 HP Mahindra is only 26 PTO so I had to go with the 5' flail, the 6' needs 30. Curiously an equivalent Kubota has about 30 PTO but my tractor can lift a fair bit more on the loader.

$2500 per acre is CHEAP! But maybe the six feet of snow that comes with it and hangs around for months puts a damper on things....

It's not cheap for us, the median income here is only $29,000/year per household.

That's why I drive 45 minutes to work each way and DH drives 30 minutes to work each way. Our "normal" land cost before 2020 was $1250-1500/acre so $2500 or more an acre is a big jump. Our 12 acres of just the land cost us approx $17,000 so $1,416/acre which is a bit high for what it is. At current prices the 80 acres would be $200,000 min vs $113,000 or less pre-2020 thats a huge difference. Kudos to the seller but it is not a buyer market here locally atm, all the city people are buying up everything here because they want out of the city......so they think.

Not really trying to be cheap, it's just never a good idea to buy high and then likely have to sell low down the road.

Just one thing to think about with small round bales... You cannot really stack them. They are very difficult to deal with. Had a guy here that used to make them and he said he wished he had never gotten that small round baler. They were the equivalent to small squares at 50-70 lbs. They do not shed rain so have to be kept in like small squares... and you can't stack them like the squares with them having no flat sides so won't stay in place. And you cannot feed out sections or flakes because they are rolled....

Thank you FarmerJan for the thoughts. We do know the perils of rounds, as we have used and made them for a few years just not last year. I would LOVE to go with the big squares exactly for the stacking and flaking however a 175+hp tractor and the large square baler is no place in our immediate future atm.

We currently only do 27 acres of hay, we used to do around 100 acres sometimes more but we had 2 hay partners then so we had a lot more equipment between both parties and we had the old tractor which hasnt been working for at least 6yrs now I think. Also moving 25 minutes from our old place didnt help because it makes no sense to take all the equipment that distance for a 5-10 acre field, on the older equipment with a top speed of 12-15mph that drive becomes 2 hrs each way.

We do plan on making some small squares as well but like 200 small squares and the rest rounds. None of us are getting younger, the DH and I both have auto-immune diseases which affect joints and produce early very early arthritis ....like starting in your late 20s. So we need to plan for a future where we are not moving and stacking 1,000+ small squares repeatedly each summer and having to lug 2-4 bales a day manually to the animals.

We have been discussing going more commercial farm direction with 45-60 breeding sheep/goats, just doing pork for ourselves and a couple cows or yaks. So it's time to start thinking and working smarter and less destructive to our bodies. Our farming theory before this was do everything the cheapest we can and usually that means things take way longer and are way harder. Our new theory is spent the money and get things done That's actually because since my raise and DH new job we actually feel secure enough to spend.


In other news.....I present the Goat Couch(thats an old shirt of mine, she prefers to be "next" to me)

 

[Bruce]

There must be "sort of small" round balers. Al does them about 300 pounds. His small squares run 40-50.