Where I grew up

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HDRider

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Today I was driving through the farm land where I grew up, saying hello to the spirits that live there. I saw one of the guys that bought the parcel my dad farmed. He is a horse hay guy. He grows some nice Bermuda horse hay. I wanted to get his phone number to get advice on hay. He said he got almost 100 bales to an acre, I am not sure how much a bale weighs. It is the big square bales.

As we were talking I mentioned that I always heard that the land that Dad and 6 or 7 others families farmed would eventually go to the university of Missouri when the last of the families left the farm. All of us share cropped the land. Three generations of my family did. This goes back to when folks used mules to farm. Dad worked in a local factory and farmed about 300 acres. Dad quit farming in 1974.

He told me the proceeds of the sale, about 2,000 acres, did indeed go to the university of Missouri.

Most of the land is now put to grade under irrigation. The two or three that bought it farm peanuts, rice and soybeans.
 
He said he got almost 100 bales to an acre, I am not sure how much a bale weighs. It is the big square bales.
Always good to travel back to your roots. But BIG square bales are 3x3, 3x4 or 4x4 feet and around 8 feet long. They are heavy, maybe 800 to 1400 pounds depending on size and density. Might be 100 bales of small squares, but 100 bales of big squares per acre would be mighty productive, unless it was in Georgia or Texas where everything is big or else there are too much spirits. :)
 
Always good to travel back to your roots. But BIG square bales are 3x3, 3x4 or 4x4 feet and around 8 feet long. They are heavy, maybe 800 to 1400 pounds depending on size and density. Might be 100 bales of small squares, but 100 bales of big squares per acre would be mighty productive, unless it was in Georgia or Texas where everything is big or else there are too much spirits. :)
I have only seen them after they were put together. It might be small squares put together into bigger bales. The 100 bales per acre were what he got in three cuttings.
 
?? So what becomes of the wire (or twine) around the 25 bales? Something is missing here..........................
 
5 tons of dry matter per acre a year for either grass or alfalfa is excellent
corn produces 20 tons. NW Iowa leads the nation with 24 tons of corn silage per acre.
 
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Probably has a bale bundler that put 25 smalls together.
2 strands of wire or twine (8-10') around 25 bales = 400-500' of extra wire or twine in every bale!
Talk about a cat digging a hole on a tin roof!
Bale bandit... stacks and bundles 21 small squares together. Guy down the road has one. Very efficient way handling small squares.
 
2 strands of wire or twine (8-10') around 25 bales = 400-500' of extra wire or twine in every bale!
Talk about a cat digging a hole on a tin roof!
But it makes handling the small bales much easier than doing it by hand. You can make a better profit by selling the small squares, particularly to horse owners.

Small-Square-Bundle-Load-Trailer-01.jpg
 

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Thank you for the bale bandit explanation.
Just goes to show the further one gets from home the more things can change!
 
I haven't seen those, but did see a outfit I think called a bale accumulator, that was ran behind a baler and bunched 9 or 10 bales in a square, could then be picked up by a frame fel attachment to load. Horses are big business around here, and also several goat and sheep outfits. so there is a pretty good market for the little square bales. We always try to get a some square hay to feed weaning calves, or anything that has to be brought into the barn. It also comes in good if tractors won't start or if it's too icy to get out with a tractor.
Not very many of the big square bales around here, most all is done in rolls.
 
I haven't seen those, but did see a outfit I think called a bale accumulator, that was ran behind a baler and bunched 9 or 10 bales in a square, could then be picked up by a frame fel attachment to load. Horses are big business around here, and also several goat and sheep outfits. so there is a pretty good market for the little square bales. We always try to get a some square hay to feed weaning calves, or anything that has to be brought into the barn. It also comes in good if tractors won't start or if it's too icy to get out with a tractor.
Not very many of the big square bales around here, most all is done in rolls.
This guy is the only square baler I know of around here. There may be others, but he is the biggest in a 5 county area.



The land to the left of the picture is part of what we used to farm.
 
This guy is the only square baler I know of around here. There may be others, but he is the biggest in a 5 county area.



The land to the left of the picture is part of what we used to farm.
Amazing to me how different the lay of the land can be. I wouldn't know how act on that much flat land. Here we may have a couple acres here and there that's somewhat level up on a ridge or down in a holler.
When I was a child, before the round hat rollers got popular here, it was all done in little bales. ( My dads little bales weren't too little they'ed about gut anybody trying to handle them.)
They would keep cattle off one side of the farm till after the hay was cut. They baled hillsides and all. It was a chore getting hay in the wagons and keeping it there going on the hills. Coming over some steep places they would have a tractor behind chained to the wagon to help keep the load from pushing the tractor pulling the wagon over the hill.
 
Amazing to me how different the lay of the land can be. I wouldn't know how act on that much flat land. Here we may have a couple acres here and there that's somewhat level up on a ridge or down in a holler.
When I was a child, before the round hat rollers got popular here, it was all done in little bales. ( My dads little bales weren't too little they'ed about gut anybody trying to handle them.)
They would keep cattle off one side of the farm till after the hay was cut. They baled hillsides and all. It was a chore getting hay in the wagons and keeping it there going on the hills. Coming over some steep places they would have a tractor behind chained to the wagon to help keep the load from pushing the tractor pulling the wagon over the hill.
I was admiring that level ground myself Ky hills. Not much of it over our way either.
 
2 strands of wire or twine (8-10') around 25 bales = 400-500' of extra wire or twine in every bale!
Talk about a cat digging a hole on a tin roof!
Easier to handle and more waste as well. (The bands used to bundle the already baled bales)
Buddy has an accumulator that follows the baler. Groups em in 9 bales I think??

All I know is, squares are lots n lots of work!
And it has to be done in a timely manner or rain will ruin all your hard work.
Requires lots of man power!
 
I now live on a strip called Crowley's Ridge.

It is flat on both sides. The land is good, but does not come close to the farm land of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and other rich glacier deposits. The land was all low land timber. It was cut and drained many years ago. Our land had an old train bed, called a dummy line that was used to haul timber out.

220px-Crowleys_Ridge_relief_v1.jpg


Dummy Line
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We also had an old school house on the property called Talley School
 

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