Re: profitable hay

Posted by kyhayman on December 17, 2005 at 07:41:15 from (68.171.76.92):

In Reply to: profitable hay posted by old fashioned farmer on December 17, 2005 at 07:17:16:

When I started in the hay business it was with an $1800 tractor, a rake that I bought at a junk auction in buckets, and a mower and baler that wasnt much better. Had under $10,000 in all of them. Spent a lot of time working on stuff. Also, I was a full time (15 hrs a semester) college student, and working for other people to cash flow my farm payment. All of my available credit was sucked up in the farm so borrowing more for equipment wasnt an option. I understand your frustration.

I couldnt do now what I did at 20 to make it work. Spend 30 hrs a week at class, another 20 working for someone, and at least 40 hrs a week farming. Cant reacll eating except in the cab of the truck or on the tractor. Summers, when I could make money hiring a custom operator to do something I did. I had people do my hay on shares while I did custom batwinging (if the economics were right). I tried to make sure I worked at it every day until dark, then went to the shop and worked on my junk. Paint is cheap and adds a lot of value. I'd fix up what ever piece of junk I was using, paint it that winter, sell it and try to buy something a little better with the profit. For 15 years I tried to put everything I made in the hay busineess back into the hay business; took a third of my paycheck to pay off the farm plus all the cow profits. It took time, and I hated being poor.

Things got better after about 10 years, farm was paid off, had pretty decent equipment by that time, and had my management system figured out. For the first time it came to a point that time was more limiting to me than money. I went a lot heavier with using custom operators (one guy cuts, rakes, rolls, and wraps 70 acres of alfalfa for me, for half and buys my half at $35 a roll at 50% moisture) This really helps me out since its the furthest field from my center of operations and is pretty mean getting big loads of wet hay out of it.

It sounds like you are working as hard as you can. Now its time to sit down and analyze where you want to go with your business, where you are now, and what is along the line to connect the dots.

Replies:

• Re: profitable hay Coloken 10:15:39 12/17/05 (0)
• Re: profitable hay Dave H (MI) 09:21:11 12/17/05 (0)

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