Bert Bates

I've been tedding and baling for a few years now. This year I also have to do the cutting, sigh.

It seems like for my 40hp tractor my choices of mower are: sickle, drum, disc.

Drum seems like the simpleist, most reliable, most fixable.

Anyone have any knowledge of good brands or not so good brands?

John F Dean wrote:Speaking of the used market, sometimes it isn’t all that clear.  They was an old hay wagon sitting beside a shed in our area for years.  Finally, someone stopped by and asked.  After a few days of haggling, it was got cheap.

Yeah, I've posted a wanted ad on our local community website, there might just be a used wagon or set of running gear in a field somewhere :)

I've got a 39hp Kubota, it's rated to pull about 5000 pounds.

I've always got lots of stuff (yards and yards of it), to move around the farm, the farm is about 2000' from south to north, so every trip takes some time.

I'm thinking about getting a small hay wagon like the picture below. (1 or 2 ton capacity). My thought is it ought to be fairly easy to unload it by using the FEL to back scrape. (I know how to be careful back scraping  )

But I'm open to other low budget approaches   If I was rich I'd get a dump trailer, but alas...

Thanks folks, this makes sense

Hi Permies!

Sorry if this question is in the wrong forum, let me know if it is!

Jackery was having a BIG sale, so I just got a jackery 3000 with 2, 200 watt panels.

The info says that the battery is good for 2000 cycles, that seems fairly normal to me.

My question is this: Is there a way to power stuff using only the panels? For example, if the generator is 100% charged, and the panels are attached, and I'm using power from the system, am I doing that without cycling the battery?

It would be nice to take advantage of the panels without degrading the battery...

Anne Miller wrote:Quick question, do you already had a well pump and are looking to add solar?

If so maybe the forum needs more info about the well pump you have.

Or do you need a well pump and looking for ways to power it?

I already have a traditional well pump, I'm guessing it's 3/4 HP.

I think we could get by quite well (no pun intended), with a small solar system... except for starting our well pump.

So I've thought about various mixed solutions, a small solar system plus:

- a diesel generator (so I could share diesel with my truck and tractor)
- a propane generator (longer term fuel storage)

And so on.

But maybe there are alternate ways to get water out of the well (about 180 feet deep)? I've seen the system that you can add to your existing well system to allow hand pumping..

Maybe a smaller, easier to power well pump?

Maybe 4 people riding bicycles attached to generators to run the pump for a few minutes a day/

I know, all sorts of crazy ideas, but my mind has been spinning on this for a while now..

Thoughts?