The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Hay Dude]

Good maintenance and a nickle's worth of grease saves a lot of money and helps for many trouble free hours of work.

I have only replaced one $950 prop shaft on the CX-15. It’s about 7 years old and has earned me a lot of gross profit (I do about $40,000/yr in field mowing).….of course a tractor is required, too.…..
The paint looks excellent, it’s mechanically excellent and would sell for about 3/4 of what I paid for it if I sold it tomorrow
I still don‘t know why it broke. The U-joint just heated up and locked up on fire.

Been a great mower. John Deere makes great stuff. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I’d own more Deere equipment if I could.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Here are a couple of pictures of another little job I did yesterday, lady wanted a road/ right of way cleaned up so she can have a 40'x 14' building delivered and set up at the far end, I forgot to take a before picture but I did get these of the finished product.

 

[Hay Dude]

Back at it today.
Ripped the lid off another cutting job. This one is about 60 acres in size and will take me about 2.5 days to complete. This field is about 2500 feet long. Wish they’d let me hay it.….

Notice anything different in picture below?

Here’s an old rail line that once came into our town. It was a rail spur that came all the way from the Chester, PA waterfront via Aston, PA. It’s the one that was wiped out by Hurricane Agnes in ‘72. This stretch of the railroad is still in-tact and never flooded.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

Wish they’d let me hay it.

What is their reasoning for not? Just curious. Is it still owned by the RR?

 

[Hay Dude]

What is their reasoning for not? Just curious. Is it still owned by the RR?

There are walking trails around the meadows owned by the Conservancy and they want their fields to look like “natural meadows”, not hay fields.

 

[LouNY]

"natural meadows" but they pay to have them mowed to create unnatural meadows

 

[Hay Dude]

"natural meadows" but they pay to have them mowed to create unnatural meadows

Yeas, it’s very strange. However, they give me other farmland to make hay off of, so I keep it zipped

Rumor has it there’s a few influential old ladies who like the tall native grasses to stand during the summer & fall.

 

[LouNY]

Well at least you can make a bit of money off what I consider to be blithering idiots.

 

[Hay Dude]

Well at least you can make a bit of money off what I consider to be blithering idiots.

You have to have the patience of Jobe to work with the these Conservancies.
The way I see it, I keep my opinions to myself and give them what they want. It’s their property and they do as they see fit.

One interesting thing is there’s another Conservancy who allows me to hay their lands 1 time per year, then pay me for a mowing in early-mid fall (see post #1).
I think this saves them money and keeps the invasives down, while returning some nutrients back to the soil.

Either way there is some money to be made and their vision of land stewardship is achieved.

 

[SmallChange]

Boy, some of your pictures sure look familiar. I do a whole lot of hiking in and around White Clay Creek State Park and also Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area. Also some in ChesLen, Stroud, Brandywine Creek State Park, Ridley Creek State Park, Goat Hill, Chrome Barren, and other areas along the PA/DE border or not far from it. Beautiful land around there!

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Not mowing , but another little small job spreading a dump truck load of fill dirt for a 12' by 40' portable shed

 

[Hay Dude]

Boy, some of your pictures sure look familiar. I do a whole lot of hiking in and around White Clay Creek State Park and also Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area. Also some in ChesLen, Stroud, Brandywine Creek State Park, Ridley Creek State Park, Goat Hill, Chrome Barren, and other areas along the PA/DE border or not far from it. Beautiful land around there!

It certainly is. Most all of it was owned by the DuPonts at one time or another.
Try State Line Woods and The Brandywine Conservancy walking trails.

 

[Dale Binkley]

It certainly is. Most all of it was owned by the DuPonts at one time or another.
Try State Line Woods and The Brandywine Conservancy walking trails.

You have posted many photos of areas I am familiar with. Grew up living near Longwood Gardens and worked as a teen-ager on a farm near the PA/DE border. Also had family with a farm in the same area. The photos brought back a lot of good memories. I mowed fields on a farm with a Ford Workmaster tractor and a bushhog mower. It was easy to mow around the ponds but you had to watch for the gulleys that were hidden in the weeds near the ponds. I had to change my pants a couple times after hitting a gulley with the rear wheel of the tractor (in the days before ROP's). I had hopes of being able to farm in the area but the farm ended up being sold and it was replaced with houses.

 

[Hay Dude]

You have posted many photos of areas I am familiar with. Grew up living near Longwood Gardens and worked as a teen-ager on a farm near the PA/DE border. Also had family with a farm in the same area. The photos brought back a lot of good memories. I mowed fields on a farm with a Ford Workmaster tractor and a bushhog mower. It was easy to mow around the ponds but you had to watch for the gulleys that were hidden in the weeds near the ponds. I had to change my pants a couple times after hitting a gulley with the rear wheel of the tractor (in the days before ROP's). I had hopes of being able to farm in the area but the farm ended up being sold and it was replaced with houses.

Would like to know where you lived, PM me if you feel like it.

 

[TractorTYMe]

Nice to have large equipment covering large acreage, I stick to properties 10 acres or less that needs brush/weed control. My 68'' Flail mower can do about 1.5acres/h if it's not too thick.

 

[Hay Dude]

I also have a John Deere 390 flail mower for small jobs, but haven’t used it much in last few years.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Did a little custom pasture re-seeding job for a customer who had mole crickets wipe his pasture grass out, 22 acres of Pensacola bahia drilled in with no-till grain drill.

 

[m1garand762]

You have to have the patience of Jobe to work with the these Conservancies.
The way I see it, I keep my opinions to myself and give them what they want. It’s their property and they do as they see fit.

One interesting thing is there’s another Conservancy who allows me to hay their lands 1 time per year, then pay me for a mowing in early-mid fall (see post #1).
I think this saves them money and keeps the invasives down, while returning some nutrients back to the soil.

Either way there is some money to be made and their vision of land stewardship is achieved.

Ain’t that the truth. I trapped beaver for the land conservancy for a few years and finally told them what to suck after 1 too many insults from management and the land owners

 

[Hay Dude]

Did a little custom pasture re-seeding job for a customer who had mole crickets wipe his pasture grass out, 22 acres of Pensacola bahia drilled in with no-till grain drill.View attachment 787767View attachment 787768View attachment 787769View attachment 787770View attachment 787771

Damn LNF, up in my parts, we’d call that a beach!
I only NTD in the fall.

I’m pretty much done with any Conservancy mowing for a few months. I got this one done a few weeks ago in beautiful weather-about 55-60* and nature all around.

Parked in the tractor shed. I’ll probably pull the mower drain & refill all the gearboxes to get ready for spring & summer

I was up at my local dealer and spotted a newer used Deere FC-20R. I still like the CX-20 better.

These have that funky “torsion” suspension. Looks cheap to me. Just rubber strips pinched into tubes. I prefer the air bags myself.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Damn LNF, up in my parts, we’d call that a beach!
I only NTD in the fall.

Bad part is, he had about 30 head of cows on it, the mole crickets wiped his grass out, good side is we got rain today with more supposed to come Monday so his seed should begin to germinate, the mole crickets have wrecked a lot of pastures and hay fields down here, I have had 2 more people call me and line up for me to re-seed their pastures in the next 2weeks.