Rake How best to collect grass clippings with compact tractor?

[Featherbrained farms]

Hi everyone, haven't posted here in a few months but now have my beautiful tractor in the yard. I'd say "my pride and joy" but that wouldn't be fair to my kids, although sometimes...

I settled on a Kubota L2501 with loader; I also have discs, a nice potato plow and a gently used Befco 48 flail with hammers. My question today is, after I've mowed with the flail, how should I collect my clippings? I need the clippings to help me turns mountains (literally) of bedding/manure into compost. We used to have wood bedding but since it doesn't compost well, I've switched over to straw which does work even in winter, but still needs a kick of nitrogen in the summer.

I could go with a sweeper, but the drawbar being so high, would it even work? Also, the cost of a sweeper being what it is, I'd rather maybe put that towards another implement. Would a landscape rake work to make a pile, then just load in FEL? Any other idea?

 

[MitchellB]

I was considering a Pine Straw Rake to drag leaves in a pile this fall, but that may or may not work for grass clippings.

 

[RjCorazza]

On occasion I collect up grass for similar purposes with a sweeper. Works fine height wise even behind my L4060, but I usually use a zero turn. You could also windrow the grass and scoop it up easily with the loader if you added a set of "Edge Tamers" to the bucket.

 

[Featherbrained farms]

I don't know about grass, but I'm sure as **** getting those to plow in the winter !
What would you recommend to windrow the grass? That is more or less what I was hoping to use the rake for.

 

[oldballs]

As a long term solution that is expensive up front, one might consider something like a Cyclone Rake or similar collection unit. It would be useful to collect not only grass clippings but fall leaves.

Cheers,
Mike