cut and bale hay northwest boon co

[BobDaniels]

Glad to hear you found someone receptive to a deal.
Doing square bales is a real man's job, especially when you do 2K bales in one day, as I have...in the mow.

2k? no thank you. 200 is enough for me in august temps while dressed in long sleeves and pants.

Nothing like remembering the good old days. In the shape I am in now, I am very thankful to have a baler which produces bales at 30 pounds or so.

what baler do you have? We have a compact series tractor with 31 hp on the pto. some people say it's enough and some say its not. I just don't know if I can justify buying the equipment just to feed two horses through the winter.

 

[IndyDave1776]

what baler do you have? We have a compact series tractor with 31 hp on the pto. some people say it's enough and some say its not. I just don't know if I can justify buying the equipment just to feed two horses through the winter.

I have a New Holland 65 compact (so specified in spite of the fact that there is no such thing as a 65 'full size'). 31 hp should be plenty to run it if you can find one. It is pretty old. Thankfully there is a really good NH baler guy within a practical distance!

31 would probably run a traditional square baler, although you have to beware that some were made for super tight bales and require something on the order of 75 hp per the brochure, although I believe that may be a bit of a stretch. Given that you are not doing production work, you can be more tolerant of the possibility of being a bit underpowered than the guy who is putting up 2K bales per day!

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

Doing square bales is a real man's job, especially when you do 2K bales in one day, as I have...in the mow.

Nothing like remembering the good old days. In the shape I am in now, I am very thankful to have a baler which produces bales at 30 pounds or so.

Ha, yeah. I don't know if we ever did as many as 2000 bales in a day, but I do remember my wage was $2.25 per hour when I baled. I also remember being glad when I rose to the position of stacking on the wagon instead of being stuck stacking in the hot dusty barn loft. The wife of one farmer I worked for would set us up with the best lunches and we'd eat all we could, and then go right back out and get after it for the rest of the day. That would kill me now.

 

[oldpink]

Ha, yeah. I don't know if we ever did as many as 2000 bales in a day, but I do remember my wage was $2.25 per hour when I baled. I also remember being glad when I rose to the position of stacking on the wagon instead of being stuck stacking in the hot dusty barn loft. The wife of one farmer I worked for would set us up with the best lunches and we'd eat all we could, and then go right back out and get after it for the rest of the day. That would kill me now.

I was getting the then minimum of about $4/hour, and they treated us to lunch, but it wasn't one of the awesome home-cooked meals, instead going with cold cuts, Oreos, and Kool-Aid, all eaten in the front yard.
No biggie, though.
I wouldn't want a half dozen big, sweaty, filthy guys trooping into my kitchen for lunch, so that was cool with us.

 

[hoosierdaddy1976]

I got paid $4/hr, as well. Had to bring my own lunch, though.

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

I got paid $4/hr, as well. Had to bring my own lunch, though.

The most I ever made was the, then, minimum wage of $2.65/hr in 1978 because the farmer couldn't find enough guys to do it for my regular farm-hand wage of $2.25 and they paid me the same as they payed "hay help", but only when I was baling. The rest of my hours, doing farm chores, milking, feeding, wrangling hogs, and my least favorite job pumping liquid hog manure out of the pits and spreading it on the cut hay and wheat fields, I got my regular wage. But, I made up for it by working 70+ hours a week. I still remember scrubbing myself almost raw in the shower, getting ready to out on a Saturday night, and still not feeling like I could totally get the hog manure smell off me. I'm sure there are people out there who still remember me as that guy who reeked of cologne.