lesson learned: putting up square bales

[72doug2,2S]

I took these pictures a couple of years ago. We have a 50% population of Amish in little Switzerland Indiana.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

Originally Posted by oldE

You are definitely doing it the best way, but....

I wonder if you were able to build a sled which could be pulled behind the baler and would allow someone to load a pallet with 9 bales then release it and drop another pallet onto the sled to be loaded as you moved around the field?



Sorry for the quality of the quick sketch. This would allow you to get your hay onto the pallets with one person on the tractor and one other person stacking on the pallets. No walking around the field to pick up hay.

I told you I was lazy!
Best
Les

Les,

That is PURE GENIUS I LOVE IT!!!!

I'm going to check into doing this, if the sled is low enough then the hay comes off at waist level, pallets on other side of sled. How does one go about releasing the pallet off the sled? This would be the break point. I'm working on this!

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

Originally Posted by lin7310948

i spent a couple of summers bucking and hauling green pea hay in the dayton washington area in 1961 and 1962. it was used for dairy cattle feed at that time. bales were bound with wire and weighed in the 100 t0 125 pound range. it was really hot and dusty work and we were paid 15 dollars per day..6 a.m. til 6 p.m.. had to wear leather chaps..jeans would not last a day before wearing holes in the knees and thigh areas..literally would spit mud when working inside due to the dust!

lin,

Pea hay, if I remember or know what I am talking about, has stems and prickly things. Yep, would really tear up a person!

Safety gear: Long heavy jeans, long sleeve shirt, heavy leather (cotton does not work) gloves, steel toe (or composite) boots, safety glasses, wide brim hat or hardhat (things fall from above all the time), and I wear a respirator.

You also have to work in the heat as grass only grows then... Yep, hard work! Glad this round is over, hope I have many more rounds to go before I get planted myself.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

Originally Posted by cashflyer

I remember being on my grandmothers farm as a young kid and watching my father and uncles loading trailers full of square bales. That was in Frankfort, Indiana.

I haven't been back on a farm since she died in the late 70s. I miss that place.

Frankfort is about two hours due north of us!

It is alot of work and I've seen many a body builder fold in the first fifteen minutes while the skinny kid could go all day. Every year my wife embarasses one or more football players. It takes a different kind of strength to lift and drop 60 - 100 pounds (average 75 - 90) a few hundred times in a matter of a few short hours. Believe me, the men (for they were obviously men!) in your family did more than a full day's labour in that time.

You are racing the weather and the sun! Cannot leave the square bales out in the night air and cannot bale while the dew is still out.

I lost about an inch on Saturday alone.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

Doug,

VERY nice! That is ALOT of work! My mother did this in the fields with the hands in 1938-40. It requires specific knowledge and a good skill set. I do not possess it and she does not wish to remember it! Looks like very old school methods of farming just on a general glance. Looks to be a horse paddock on the side of the barn and the barn designed to hold animals and equipment. Do not see power/phone poles and lines, but those can be buried as well.

There are alot of Amish south of us. They have nicer homes than us, newer and higher level cars and tractors, i-phones and android phones, laptops, etc. Nothing like I was lead to believe through the years.

[72doug2,2S]

Our Amish still come over to use the phone, so they aren't too progressive. I have seen a few solar panels and windmills in the Woodburn area. But
they are more advanced up there. Some even have bikes!

[oldE]

Originally Posted by Groesbeck Hurricane

Les,

That is PURE GENIUS I LOVE IT!!!!

I'm going to check into doing this, if the sled is low enough then the hay comes off at waist level, pallets on other side of sled. How does one go about releasing the pallet off the sled? This would be the break point. I'm working on this!

I would think a set of parallel arms (kind of like a miniature version of the 3 point hitch arms on the back of the tractor) supporting a set of pallet forks (facing the rear) behind the axle. The forks are raised and locked into place with a lever, a pallet is dropped onto the forks and the hay is placed on the pallet. When the pallet is full, the lever is released, dropping the forks to slide along the ground, which allows the pallet to remain behind. The operator then raises the forks and throws on another pallet from the supply to the right.

You would have to use pallets with no bottom boards, to allow them to be dropped over the forks.
I would think a 6" vertical travel would be sufficient.

Best
Les

[maxnine11]

The last year we used a square baler exclusively on our relatively small farm, we made 17,000 bales. How many pallets would that take?
The "crew" consisted of my father, my mother and myself.
The good old days. Seriously.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

Les,

I do not like losing the bottom boards as they give stability and would aid in locking in the stacks but that might be a price to pay? Wonder if a slide would work where it kicks down and the bale slides off? That could cause it to dump the load, very bad!

Originally Posted by maxnine11

The last year we used a square baler exclusively on our relatively small farm, we made 17,000 bales. How many pallets would that take?
The "crew" consisted of my father, my mother and myself.
The good old days. Seriously.

Max,

1,889, the last one would not be full. I would have a 10% buffer though as you just never know what pallets are going to break...

17,000 bales? THAT is farming! (and hard work!!!!) Man, that is about 7/8 days of baling? What type of equipment did you find worked best? My little IH Farmall 60 2010 model was the smallest tractor on our place this weekend. JD 4020 and MF 185 (used to be mine but I sold it) were the other two tractors. Those older machines were fabulous and worked like noones business!

How did yall manage it? What type of storage or were you loading directly into 18 wheelers for transport? Elevators? Man, I cannot imagine that type of work!!! Next year we are expecting to have ~80 acres to cut and bale. Looking at ~7,200 square bales. Will likely cut over three or four weeks. Using the IH 60 and a JD 6420 (hate the JD). Might try to pick-up an older machine for some of the work. Put my FIL in the a/c cab of the JD (agent orange has taken a terrible toll on him) and let him just run the machine, MIL on the IH, Wife and I on the ground and anyone else we can con into working.


Got our pallets for the high price of: Sure, please take them away! Got many times what our 18 acre patch will load down. Working to get more!

[GWN7]

Originally Posted by Groesbeck Hurricane

Les,

That is PURE GENIUS I LOVE IT!!!!

I'm going to check into doing this, if the sled is low enough then the hay comes off at waist level, pallets on other side of sled. How does one go about releasing the pallet off the sled? This would be the break point. I'm working on this!

When I bailed hay as a kid, the hay sled (The one you road on) had a slot in it. You took a iron bar with a round handle out of a tube on the bailing machine and drove the pointy end of the bar into the ground ahead of the stack of bails. As the sled was pulled forward the bar caused the bails to slide off the sled and you pulled the iron bar out and put it back into the tube on the bailer.

[oldE]

Originally Posted by Groesbeck Hurricane

Les,

I do not like losing the bottom boards as they give stability and would aid in locking in the stacks but that might be a price to pay? Wonder if a slide would work where it kicks down and the bale slides off? That could cause it to dump the load, very bad!

I was thinking of another linkage which would allow the forks to be rotated vertically after the pallet was released. That would, in theory, allow the operator to slip a pallet over the ends of the fork, then rotate it down to the 'Load' position.
Given the weight and cumbersome nature of handling a pallet on a moving platform, I think the idea has gone beyond practical means.

Another option would be to place about a dozen pallets on a wagon body, tow the wagon behind the baler and load the pallets. When the wagon is 'full' unhitch and connect to another wagon, geared up the same way. A third operator could use a forklift equipped tractor to haul that to the barn and unload the pallets and return to swap wagons again.

I will go to amazing lengths to avoid what I consider "work".

Have fun!
Les