The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Coffee drinker]

It's to bad you can't put all that nice grass for hay. In our area we have had 3 dry years and we have been putting the grass from the ditches beside the road up for hay. Not a fun job, some of them can be pretty steep.

 

[Hay Dude]

It's to bad you can't put all that nice grass for hay. In our area we have had 3 dry years and we have been putting the grass from the ditches beside the road up for hay. Not a fun job, some of them can be pretty steep.

I do sometimes. Many of the areas I show being cut with a mower are

1. Customer doesn’t want hay made on their property
2. Too wet from ground water, swamp, river, etc.
3. Too small of a lot.

I have made hay on a few of them, bust as you can imagine, it’s not too practical to bring 60,000lbs of hay equipment on a small or wet property.

I hay the bigger fields and the ones where the owner is good with farming. Have all the hay I can handle.

 

[Coffee drinker]

Do you get paid for cutting and get to keep the hay on the fields you put up for hay or do you just get the hay?

 

[Molalla1]

Today started out like most days. On the way to work I spotted a nice snapping turtle on the way to get the tractor.

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And now to cutting. Yesterday, I left with a customer only part way done. Today I worked on finishing it before noon.
This Reeds Canary grass is really thick & heavy. I was hoping not to clobber a spring fawn.

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Below: Finished this meadow and you can see 3 buzzards. Went back to look, it wasn’t a fawn. Probably a rabbit.

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On to the next area and a reminder of how muddy it is.

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I finally finished up this one and here I am at the next one, below:

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Done for the day and after stopping at a friends from church, I’m headed home. This full moon reminded me of the wonders of God- the world, the universe and all that is.

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Yep HD that muddy area is like how the areas around ponds and some bottom areas here . . . it looks nice to mow but as soon as you put some tonnage on it we got mud soup . . .

 

[Hay Dude]

Do you get paid for cutting and get to keep the hay on the fields you put up for hay or do you just get the hay?

Its different for every customer/farm.

When you see the Deere CX-15, that is almost always contract mowing, with a signed contract to mw X number of times per year.
When you see Hay equipment, its almost always a verbal contract to cut the hay and keep it in exchange for the customer getting their fields cut

 

[Molalla1]

Its different for every customer/farm.

When you see the Deere CX-15, that is almost always contract mowing, with a signed contract to mw X number of times per year.
When you see Hay equipment, its almost always a verbal contract to cut the hay and keep it in exchange for the customer getting their fields cut

Exactly . . .

 

[EddieWalker]

How many times a year do you mow the fields to keep them nice? or is it just once or twice to keep the weeds under control?

 

[Hay Dude]

How many times a year do you mow the fields to keep them nice? or is it just once or twice to keep the weeds under control?

Do you mean the fields that are rotary mowed?
I have contracts with a bunch of clients. The most common number of mowings is 3.

3 mowings does a good job at keeping a field “grassy”. There’s still weeds, but no stickers, multiflora, or goldenrod.

2 mowings will allow multi flora, and several other invasive species.

1 mowing is a mess and I am in talks with my only 1-time per year client that we either go to 3 or get somebody else.

I have one huge customer that does 4 mowings because people want to walk their dogs in the fields.

 

[EddieWalker]

Thanks. I’ve been doing 3 mowings at my place and I was curious what others do.

 

[BackRoad]

It appears that "reclaiming" field edges might be another sideline business for you Mr. HayDude.

Appears like there's quite a bit of shrub encroachment on some of the fields you're mowing.

A SS with a mulcher might pay for it's self.