Everyone's situation is different. In our case, I have day job in the way and my kids are getting away from me, so I'm being reduced to a one man army. 2017 was especially labor intensive with me doing most of the stacking on the wagon behind the baler. So for 2018 - we needed to make a change. I looked at NH bale wagons, but everything around me looked like a wore- out breakdown ready to happen. Stacking on the wagon was a lot of labor, it would have killed me to have to go around and pick-up the bales off the ground by myself if the bale wagon broke down. I really like the accumulator and grapple set-ups. Kuhn and Steffan were my pick had we gone that route. Problem for us was - with a day job, there are only so many hours in the day and if I'm by myself, then I have to make another trip out to the field to retrieve the bales. These systems were expensive too and required a tractor with a loader or a skid steer - neither of we have. When I retire and have more time, I'll likely go with the accumulator grapple set-up. I have a friend who makes square bales of bermuda grass in SC. He is a one man army and does 9,000 bales of hay by himself - but he's got much more daylight time than I do. The solution for us was adding a pan kicker to our JD baler and retrofitting our existing hay wagons with kicker racks. This allows me to bale the hay and get it off the field in one pass. We are putting up shelters tall enough to pull the wagons into for unloading later in the day or next day or next week - bottom line, if rain or dark/dew is coming, I can get the hay baled by myself, off the field and under cover. The cost of the kicker (and used ones abound as they are no longer the go-to hay tool) compared to an accumulator grapple set-up was much lower, so it pencils out better for us.
BTW - JD recommends a shorter bale for their kicker to help maintain bale shape. We reduced our bale length to 30-32 inches - nice and tight. The bales hold their shape good, they are lighter weight - which our horse customers especially appreciate and we reduced the price accordingly.
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Today's Featured Article - Tuning-Up Your Tractor: Secondary Ignition Wires and Distributor - by Curtis Von Fange. In our last episode we spent the entire day checking out the spark plugs. Is that efficency? Actually, it took more time to explain than it really did to do the inspection. At any rate we decided that a compression test was in order so we could verify the internal engine status. That way we wouldn't buy any tune up parts until we were sure that the engine was in reasonable mechanical condition. Our tests showed a fictional compression reading of 85, 80, 82 and 86 psi. That is well within a
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