Small farm low maintenance advice

[puppet]

I bought 130 round bales for £5 this year so pointless making any at home. Anything involving machinery will cost you and what will you produce?
Grass is the easiest to maintain by just eating it. Buy some old ewes with lambs at foot each spring if you don't want a lambing. Rent some out, make enough hay/haylage for your own needs. Buy 20 native breed cows which will calf easily, synchronise and AI them to calve within your 2 weeks holiday and outwinter them. Mess up 5 acres each year and leave the rest for some store lambs rental.
You either need fences or machinery and I would go for the fences.

 

[czechmate]

I bought 130 round bales for £5 this year so pointless making any at home. Anything involving machinery will cost you and what will you produce?
Grass is the easiest to maintain by just eating it. Buy some old ewes with lambs at foot each spring if you don't want a lambing. Rent some out, make enough hay/haylage for your own needs. Buy 20 native breed cows which will calf easily, synchronise and AI them to calve within your 2 weeks holiday and outwinter them. Mess up 5 acres each year and leave the rest for some store lambs rental.
You either need fences or machinery and I would go for the fences.

Why would anyone sell them for that?

 

[puppet]

Farm sale, plenty silage made last summer.

 

[Lazy-Farmer]

But won’t the subsidies gradually be withdrawn anyway going forward, even if you farm it yourself? So letting it would be no disadvantage from the subsidy aspect. Might be different in Scotland but that will be the case down here.
If we want income from the government down here then we need to enter into stewardship agreements and even then they are no longer as generous as BPS but more in line with the return you’d expect from a crop.

Yeah id agree with you on that. Either way I’m. It a fan of going full rent as I have done it in the past and it always annoyed me.

 

[Lazy-Farmer]

Crikey, it does sound grim (weather wise) if you are struggling to make wrapped bales!🌨

It is manageable it was just last year didn’t go well. Rather have more than one basket for the eggs.

 

[Lazy-Farmer]

I bought 130 round bales for £5 this year so pointless making any at home. Anything involving machinery will cost you and what will you produce?
Grass is the easiest to maintain by just eating it. Buy some old ewes with lambs at foot each spring if you don't want a lambing. Rent some out, make enough hay/haylage for your own needs. Buy 20 native breed cows which will calf easily, synchronise and AI them to calve within your 2 weeks holiday and outwinter them. Mess up 5 acres each year and leave the rest for some store lambs rental.
You either need fences or machinery and I would go for the fences.

To be fair that’s sorta what I was thinking myself. I have good fences on the whole place and have a perfectly usable 140hp tractor, loadall, mower, topper, Harrows, dung spreader roller, fert spreader etc. All the usual basic farm kit so not a problem to add a few other bits etc.

 

[Lazy-Farmer]

Farm sale, plenty silage made last summer.

Being fair to myself my first wee girl was born about then, covid hit, I changed jobs and we had a death on the family so my focus was not really on the farm much.

 

[puppet]

To be fair that’s sorta what I was thinking myself. I have good fences on the whole place and have a perfectly usable 140hp tractor, loadall, mower, topper, Harrows, dung spreader roller, fert spreader etc. All the usual basic farm kit so not a problem to add a few other bits etc.

I would say you have plenty kit to use up all your free time away from the other job. My goal is to have a tractor parked up as much as possible. If your fences are good then livestock probably the best answer as low maintenance. Selling hay in a good summer is difficult, in a bad summer soul-destroying.

 

[Mark C]

Put it all intro a 5 year stewardship scheme. CLaim some capital to improve your steading, hedging fences , yard, water supplies, sow it all down to a 2 year legume fallow/ low input grass option that just needs topping. It's not 'proper farming' but will give you a better return with less hassle

 

[Dry Rot]

Have you got any young farming neighbours wanting to branch out on their own?

Come to some share farming type of arrangement so they can look after your grazing livestock. That way you're not just letting out your grassland and still have some involvement/control.

Easier said than done! Advertising produced several equine hopefuls, a rescue, and a couple of non-starters! Lots of young people wanting to get into farming? Yeah, maybe on paper but wanting to get mud on their boots is another matter. Currently looking at the economics of a lynx and wolf sanctuary with the possibility of captive breeding ravens and sea eagles on the side.

 

[Aftermaths]

Just go wall to wall spring barley and live an easy life of it
80acres should give you 200 odd tonnes to sell, plus straw, harvest movement into the maltings so no dedicated storage needed and contractors to do the big jobs. Fatten some stores if you like to keep yourself busy

 

[Lazy-Farmer]

Just go wall to wall spring barley and live an easy life of it
80acres should give you 200 odd tonnes to sell, plus straw, harvest movement into the maltings so no dedicated storage needed and contractors to do the big jobs. Fatten some stores if you like to keep yourself busy

How would that stack up cash wise. I’d say I only have about 40-60 acres that might work for that. I wonder if you’d just be turning money and paying contractors without really making anything. I’d have to do a bit of work to sorta few things and I imagine yields might not be amazing till I get everything up to scratch.

assuming you had an average to low yield, averageto low price you recon you could pay the contractors, fert, seed and anything else and have anything left for you?