[perdita_fysh]

Our newly acquired 20 acre farm was previously used for sheep grazing (and chickens before that).  We've done nothing with most of the land so far and are currently the proud owners of lots of very very long grass (and thistles) as a result.  I'm not overly bothered about leaving it to nature, ultimately our goal is to have large areas that are natural and we want to plant trees.  But in the immediate term cash is pretty tight.

Would we be able to get some money back on the grass?  We don't have the equipment to cut it ourselves, although my husband would love to get a tractor.  We've looked at the compacts that have bailing equipment options but it looks to me as though that might take a phenomenal amount of effort and time to do ourselves, and then I don't know how we'd go about selling the resulting grass either.  When the local farmer cut his adjacent fields he had lots of massive equipment and a team of about 5 blokes to do it.  Feeling rather out of our depth with this and don't really want to go and knock at the farmer's door because I suspect he'd spot us for complete newbies straight off and I wouldn't know if he was offering a reasonable deal or not.  All advice welcome

[pgkevet]

I ahve some similarities to you here. Small bales might go for £4-50 for good quality hay but the costs of a contractor to do it and th vagaries of weather etc..and the practicalities of actually selling it make it less of an exciting option than first glance. then if you have a load of thistles and rubbish in your grassland the value is lower. Large bales might go for £25 but not somthing you'll move by hand.

My neighbouring farmer cuts and takes my hay. Off the 54 acres of farm i have about 25acres that's mowable (woodland and steep slopes for the rest) and he gets roughly 120 large bales off it. The deal we stuck is that he tops the slopes that i haven't got the courage to take my little tractor on and he does my hedge brushing too. He's also handy for pulling me out of swamps, dealing with trees than fall on the road and general advice.

Don;t be shy about talking to your neighbour - just be canny about any agreements and or make it a 'one-off' this year.

You never know what might get offered.. say spraying your thistles perhaps even if you pay for the jollop. Another kindness my neighbour did was send his contractor down to spread muck on my vaggie patch - free muck and a spreader than did a job it'd have taken me 2 days in about 10 minutes.

[twizzel]

Before you contemplate cutting the grass a few things to consider- if you cut and bale for hay the value and quality will be lower due to the thistles. How wide are your gateways- my OH has a cracking small baler which is always in demand but it is a very wide piece of equipment and needs a wider than normal gateway to get in to the field. Have you got storage for said hay if you don't manage to sell off the field? It might be worth asking the farmer to come have a look- he will be able to advise whether it's worth the time, effort and expense of making hay or whether it's just worth spraying the field for weeds/thistles and topping field after. Hay is such a labour intensive crop- cut on one day, turn for the next 3 or 4 days, bale and then bring in on trailers, it may not be worth the time if your end product isn't great quality.

[Stellan Vert]

Hi Twizzel

Out of interest, what is the make of your OHs baler.

SV

[Bramblecot]

Def. talk to the neighbouring farmer .  You will need your hedges cut in the winter, and the fields will be better off cut than left.

[twizzel]

Hi Twizzel

Out of interest, what is the make of your OHs baler.

SV

It's a 2012 New Holland

[perdita_fysh]

Thanks for the info all. Access is good so machinery size shouldn't be a problem, we just need to find a friendly farmer I guess

[shygirl]

id be quick, they have been cutting here already. it will be worthless in a couple of months.
maybe offer it standing, so they cut it themselves and take it away.

[perdita_fysh]

I thought I'd update how it worked out here. We still hadn't managed to sort something when a guy called and offered to cut it and buy the hay off us. It sounded too good to be true but we only needed it cutting so figured we couldn't really lose. While we waited for a good forecast another lady called to introduce herself as the land owner of the adjacent fields and we worked out that the first guy was a gypsie who would be getting her son to do the actual work, so for the future we will deal direct and avoid his cut.

It still worked out ok, they cut and baled it last week and got 184 large round bales, plus they came back and mulched the thistle patches too. Our cut was 34 bales so overall quite happy. they put fertiliser down too so we should ge another cut later in the year.