Young wannabe farmer

I have the farming bug but still live at home with my parents and we only have 1 acre. How profitable will it be to rent a couple acres that are scattered around my place within the mile or 2 and possibly do corn or some other crop? I already have a '44 JD b and a '51 AC B and '49 C. I would just need to get some implements.

Pretty hard to do corn on small fields. How about hay?

That would be a better choice. Definitely do small square bales.

Hay can be a nice summer job and works on odd fields a little better. Lot of work, but that is how you get paid, so that would be good.

A problem with hay is keeping it dry until your customers come. You can sell it right behind the baler, but still rain happens, and storing some until fall and selling then gets a better price, if you have a building or can find a roof with one of the small fields to put some hay in.....

Depends, of course, on your market, horses or small dairy or what is around you.

Paul

I do several small fields for hay that No one else
wants .

I also vote for hay or maybe sweet corn. But just hay the first year. Small square balers are cheap, and you'll find out if you really want it. Farming. Good luck!

If you want to make a small profit I would agree with the other
posts that suggest hay in square bales. The other thing that
could be profitable would be vegetable crops like sweet corn,
tomatoes, pumpkins etc. The main issues with hay would be
the cost of seeding the fields to hay unless they already are in
hay, having storage and a market for it. The main issues with
the vegetable operation would be producing a marketable
crop and marketing it. Farmers markets or your own road side
stand are two options. There?s a fair amount of time hand
harvesting and marketing vegetables.

I agree.......on small fields , hay works best. Helps if you have horse lovers in the area ,they can be hard to deal with. I find the dealing and haggling fun........make sure you know your cost per bale.

The trouble with crops like corn and beans is the harvest......with small acres you will have to hire combining .....unless you are rich ...lol... and can buy combine. Hard too hire harvest on small acres.

A lot depends on your regular job. If you work part time or nights, hay can work well if you can still do your job lacking some sleep. If you work full time days or afternoon shift you will need to burn some of your vacation time, loose overtime, or call in sick to put up any hay during the work week. It can be a bummer if you can't get time off before your hay gets rained on.

Have you considered pasturing livestock or working part time for another farmer? As low man on another farm you might get the less desirable jobs, but it could be a great opportunity to learn a lot about farming while getting paid. On the downside, minimum wage could be more than you will make your first few years of farming. I noticed none of your tractors have live PTO, which would help a lot for hay.

Tough to make any money on small acreage like that, maybe with melons or veggies would be better?
Urge you to go to work for or just help another larger farmer to learn and you will need to ask plenty of questions.

Remember the old addage; "how do you make a million farming?, start with two million" . . . . .

As others have said hay is your best bet. You need to make good quality hay but all that takes is determination. The key is good customer relations. I have a few good customers who have been buying from me for 30 years.

First off the ones that say make hay are not considering the tractor power you have. You do not have enough tractor to pull a power take off hay baler, an engine driven model yes but those would be very scarce, lucky in looking at a thousand balers would you find an engine driven model and then it would be in so bad a shape you could not get it working. You do not have avaible enough power to make hay. So the vegetable would be about your only option and then if you were in an area that you could get enough sales to get rid of your crop after hand harvesting it. I do have an Amish friend that raises vegetables for sale but he has severak kids with him in the bussiness to help. But he is also on the board of the local produce auction. He does not raise sweet corn but tomatoes, Potatoes, Candy onions, cabbage, culiflour, mellons ans some pumpkins. But he sells most of the crop thru the produce auction. Some from home. But he has been in the produce bussiness for years. All the tomatoes are raised in hoop type grean houses. And he does the tillage with horses. If you want to start trying produce see if there is a good farmers market close to you. If so see what is offered there and then what actually sells and then figure out of what sells you could to make up a shortfall from other sellers and try to fill that gap. And your 1 acre if all crop ground would be more than you could handle by yourself. Do you have a cultivator for that AC B tractor, if so you could do a lot of cultivating with it but if you don't have one figure on doing all cultivating by hand. The other tractors could not handle the cultivating chorse.

The 44 JD B would be able to handle the cultivation.

(quoted from post at 09:29:56 04/13/20)
The 44 JD B would be able to handle the cultivation.

Click to expand...

Levi, your B will handle any number of the older smaller PTO driven balers all day no problem. Balers don't take much power provided your hay is dry. When I started out 30 years ago I pulled mine with a 19 HP Kubota, and those old 2 cyl. JD horses are a lot bigger than the Kubota horses. When we started we had people stopping by and asking if we would hay their field for them so that they don't have to pay someone to rotary mow it. We pay zero rent for the smaller fields. Many were weedy at first. We bought a truckload of lime and spread it and next year most weeds were gone.

My B was 2 years newer than his and I would not have wanted to try to pull our New Holland 66 Baler with it if the baler was not engine driven. This was on flat land. Now if it would be a late 47 or newer model B no problem.

Yes the B will handle a 2 row cultivator just fine. Problem is row width In that for some of your crops if in vegetable production you wouldwant 30" rows for some and others possibly 60" rows, that is why the JD would not work for vegetable cultivation but the AC B with a single row cultivator would. With enouth knolage and extra parts you could set the JD cultivator for 30" rows and that would be good for either sweet or field corn. But there are no crops that I know of in the produce line that you would want to plant in 30" rows except bush grean beans. That row spacing is why I said for cultivators for the AC B and I am assuning your C is an AC C and not a Farmall C but both would use cultivators doing same row width as your JD B. I had a 46 JD B and a 49 JD B. Your 44 JD would have a 4 1/2" bore low compression engine for low horsepower compaired to a late 47 up with a 4 11/18" bore engine with gas pistions instead of kerosine pistons that would have been normal for your 44 JD B. 1/4th more power in the later B.

Levi i'm in the same boat as you are. My family ran a large dairy farm in the south metro Minnesota. My fathers uncles split and sold off the farm when my dad was in his late teens and the thought of him running the family farm was lost. he was able to buy about 5 acres of the farm but never was able to do anything with it.
I'm now in my early 20's and I have acquired a tractor and a couple implements but I would like to do the same thing as your doing. I feel that with the small acreage that you and I would be able to get our hands on it would best be suited to do hay. If you did do vegetables there is a lot of work that's involved in it. If your not afraid of mostly manual work than that is a very good option because i hear that most of the small farms in this area that do that seem to end the year with A lot of extra green. If your like me and you love the tractor aspect then hay, small grains are the answer but you will have to find someone to harvest the small grains.

I do agree with what a lot of the other guys are saying in that you should check out the local farms around the area. My father did end up finding a small farm in the area to work on and that allows him to get his yearly farm fix.

I just need to find some land so I can have a place to play with my toys. Also if you get in with a farm you could maybe talk to them and get a size able chunk to mess with or have them do the fall harvesting.

Is your 49 C an AC? If so, it would have the most power to run a baler! The Allis B would be your 2nd choice!
Now if the C is a Farmall, it and the JD would be close to tied for 2nd, behind the Allis.