Back in the day my elderly neighbor ran his 40 acres, and rents another 40 acres one like away, and raised a famly of 3 kids using a Ford N as the main tractor with oats, wheat, corn, & beans as the only job.
So yea, a 50 hp tractor will handle 70 acres.
But I assume you have a real job, and farm ecconomics & people's lifestyles have changed a bit so how many hours do you have available?
It gets hard to farm with just one tractor. Your 50 hp will pull a 4 or 6 row planter or bean drill. A bigger one would be hooked up to the tillage equipment, and it's a lot less stressful hooking back & forth...
Sounds like you are pretty new to all this, and probably want to do it for fun, experience, & pride as much as anything?
But it will be a hobby, and so needs to be somewhat self-supporting, and somewhat fun.
A little bigger setup will probably be funner, and easier to have pride in.
Would you be set up to rent out the 50 acre field to a neighbor, make some good solid income there, and farm the remaining small parts yourself? You could easily do them with your current tractor, and learn about farming on a small scale. Then in a year or 3, when you are a little more used to things and have your equipment set up comfortable, you can take over the whole thing. You'll know then what time you have avaialble, what size equipment you'll need, and so on. Typically old small used equipment what you buy now you can sell again for the same money in a couple years; so even if you have to upgrade or swap out some machinery as you go, you won't lose much money on the deal.
Might want to consider the baby steps. 70 acres of grain is big enough to really cost you if you mess it up; in today's world, you gotta put $400 into an acre to get a good crop out of it, and mess up the weed control or planting time & you can lose out big time; never mind mother nature coming along & wiping out your crop.
Baby steps? You are set up well with the big field and small plots to start out small but still get a good rental income from the big field..... Best of both worlds.
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Today's Featured Article - Hydraulic Basics - Part 2 - by Curtis Von Fange. In the last entry to this series we gave a brief overview of hydraulic system theory, its basic components and how it works. Now lets take a look at some general maintenance tips that will keep our system operating to its fullest potential. The two biggest enemies to a hydraulic system are dirt and water. Dirt can score the insides of cylinders, spool valves and pumps. Wate
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