[County Dangler]

I'm looking for a bit of advice on a better way of getting a bit of income from our land. At prestent we rent 14 of our 16 acres out to a local farmer on a crop by crop basis. We don't yet have the infrastructure to be able to manage it our selves yet-no barns or tractor etc yet. The land itself is very good quality which has always pasture in living memory but was broken 7 years ago and has had a rotation of crops on it until now.

At the moment he has a crop of winter wheat on it which should be done in august. Now for various reasons theres no way i will be continuing this arrangement with said farmer so I'm looking at possible alternatives.

Ideally what we would like would be to put it back to grass and i guess we have 2 options here: to pay a contractor to harrow/seed/roll it and then have a local farmer come and cut it and pay me a rate per bail, or to rent it as an acreage in an annual agreement and let him put the grass down and put his sheep on it etc.

I guess we would also have to pay someone to do my hedges etc where as i could include it in a rental agreement. But after our current experience I'd rather not have anyone do anything on my land without them being asked to.

Yes, we get a decent rent per acre at the moment but it's not all about the money. Does anyone have any experience of having a farmer come and cut hay and paying a bail rate? how did it work out financially? On good quality land what sort of annual yeild would you expect?

thanks

[ellied]

What I did in my former holding was agree with a local farmer that he would grow a crop of barley and undersow it with grass seed.  He left me the straw bales for free and took the grain away.  Then he put sheep on it to ted the grass and paid me a weekly rate per head but it left me lovely grass with strong roots rather than dug up by vehicles or larger livestock (I have ponies and he also has cattle). 

Not sure if the timescale or farmer availability is right for your situation, I'd have problems doing it here because the paperwork hassle of shifting sheep on and off my holding is too much for the nearest sheep neighbour.  But it would save you the cost of bringing in a contractor, you'd get a decent hay crop next year and some transition income for this season which would otherwise be just outgoing costs and waiting.

Can't answer the rest, but hope it works out for you.  I wish I had the arrangements here that I had with the 2 neighbouring farms in the last holding, just without the immediate nasty neighbour that was one reason for moving out, the other being availability of a holding with a dwelling on it

[Merrie Dancer]

try sell the let by auction at the mart.