Crop residue--tons per acre.
I don't have a book in front of me that tells tons per acre of wheat crop residue. A Google search shows a couple of sites that mention 6,000 pound and 8,000. Let's play around with the 6,000 pound figure. Assuming each small square bale will weigh 60 pounds, that is 100 per acre, multiplied by your 300 acres, equals 30,000 bales. While you may not have to handle them picking them up with a skid steer loader, once they are one the loader what do you do with them? A trailer or truck bed? They are going to have to be stacked on either. Also they will have to be placed into a stack or shed. Hand labor involved there without a bale wagon. Let's assume that it takes 10 seconds per bale to remove it from the conveyance and to place it in a stack. Those 300,000 seconds turn into 5,000 minutes or 83 hours. Handling bales all day long is tiring. Let's assume 10 hour days. That is 8+ days of nothing but stacking the bales if you have no intruptions and those bringing the bales to you can keep up. Cutting 300 acres, which is 13,068,000 square feet of land with a 9 foot mower will take a while too. While I applaud your dream and know that you could make it work, it will take timing and effort on your part. You would want to get the beans planted as soon as the wheat is off, so you might need to think bigger is better in this case. Like Rick asked, can you develop or do you have a market for 30,000 bales?
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