If I ever end up getting some land I’m definitely going to have to check these things out or give you a shopping list and money to get some stuff.
That's pretty much what I'm doing now that I've got the land. Most of my bids are for flips, but there's a tractor, two sickle bar mowers, a hay rake and a few other odds and ends that I'm planning to utilize. The kids that we have cut and bale our fields are swamped with other work right now so I'm just going to do it myself now that I've got the tractor. There really aren't any balers at this auction that look halfway decent, so I'll probably source one from marketplace. I'll also be a lot more comfortable buying one from someone that's used it to make sure its in time and such since timing a baler can be a 12 hour job depending on how fucked up it is.
The "ideal" hay setup is 50 horsepower tractor, a haybine (essentially imagine a grain head on a combine with sickle bar, with an auger feeding two rubber drums called conditioners that squish/flatten the hay as it goes through to dry it out quicker), a rake and a baler.
I will be doing this with my 27 horsepower utility tractor for sure, potentially another small tractor if it goes cheap enough (Farmall Super H, less powerful than my Case 310 but enough power to run the sickle mower, rake and pull a hay cart), a sickle bar mower which does not condition or windrow the hay since they take fuck all for power to run, a rake which is ground driven off its own wheels and only requires the tractors pulling power, and the baler. Being that I'm on flat ground my tractor SHOULD run a smaller square baler without too much issue. Baler most likely won't have a kicker to toss the finished bales and pulling a wagon behind the setup will probably be too much for my tractor, so I'll have to hand stack them on a trailer.
With our lack of rain, I don't think I'll suffer to much not having the conditioner that the haybine would've provided, and I can always buy a conditioner separately and run it in-line with the right sickle mower, or just add a step and condition the crop after being cut and windrowed.
So yeah, this whole agriculture thing is escalating quickly lol. I would like to get a Farmall 400/450 which is right at the bottom of that 50 horsepower requirement, or something like a 706/756 which is 73/80 horsepower respectively and can do a hell of a lot of work pretty effortlessly.
I'd love to be running green machines, but fuck are they pricey. Year for year, horsepower for horsepower, option for option, hours for hours you can get the same damn tractor painted red for a fraction of the cost because they made so damn many of them. A Farmall M/ Super M turned up will get you mid 40 horsepower all day, and if you're patient can be had for next to nothing because they made 100,000 of those fuckers and they're damn hard to kill. There was a Super M locally with new rear tires, 3pt conversion (able to run damn near any implement made from the mid 50's to present), aftermarket governor (power increase), rear hydraulic remote and a clutch in 2017 for $2,000... For some patience and another $400 I could've found a wide front for it to make it a true 4-wheel tractor instead of a V-wheel. The shit is insanely cheap if you're willing to work with old stuff.