Going farming

johndeere6920s

Well-Known Member
I made a thread about this a while back but it kind of got nowhere.
I'd be seriously interested in going farming at some sort of crop.
I'd like to have something else to have alongside the hire work, I haven't an acre of ground so that's a big disadvantage, I'm just wondering is it possible to make a reasonable amount of money from any type of tillage?
 
I made a thread about this a while back but it kind of got nowhere.
I'd be seriously interested in going farming at some sort of crop.
I'd like to have something else to have alongside the hire work, I haven't an acre of ground so that's a big disadvantage, I'm just wondering is it possible to make a reasonable amount of money from any type of tillage?
The short answer is no, but if you can find a niche market there is money, your climate is probably against you. It is very tough making money out of commodity tillage crops on rented land. I know a lot who have failed.
Is there Combines available to hire locally?
Is straw valuable locally?
Is slurry available locally?
Would wholecrop silage be saleable?
I am only guessing now, but would a rotation of Winter Oats (Likes a wet climate), followed by Winter Barley (early in and early out), followed by Kale/Rape for grazing by young stock, followed by wholecrop Combicrop, work locally?
Or Organic Oats, followed by Organic Malting Barley, followed by Red Clover?
 
From my own experience I would say trying to make money from tillage when all your ground is rented is a waste of time. From following what you post on here I would suggest that if you want something else to compliment the hire work then try to expand the fabrication and repairs side of things. At least then you would have a reasonably secure guarantee of being paid for your labours, if you go out and sow a crop you have a lot of money tied up in it that can't be cashed in until harvest and a week of bad weather at the wrong time could wipe out your profit for the year. Also if the contracting is your bread and butter then that will take priority over the crop husbandry which brings it's own problems, and you will be adding extra workload at what are probably already your busiest times of the year.
 
I made a thread about this a while back but it kind of got nowhere.
I'd be seriously interested in going farming at some sort of crop.
I'd like to have something else to have alongside the hire work, I haven't an acre of ground so that's a big disadvantage, I'm just wondering is it possible to make a reasonable amount of money from any type of tillage?

Short answer , if you are in an area with any amount of dairy cows , you haven't a hope .
Any bit of land that comes up for rent will be taken by a dairy farmer , at twice what money its worth .
Lots of lads are taking lots of conacre for tillage . But they might make 40 or 50 an acre real profit , and have 300 acres of it , and or , their own owned land is carrying a lot of the cost .

You seem to be fearless , as regards facing into the innards of a CVX .You have tools.and a shed . Mechanics are impossible to get . Let the owner buy the parts , and you won't be carrying any risk , we'll a hell of a lot less than tillage in someone else's ground . You can do a few clutches etc first , and see how things go .

Lorry driving if you have the license .

Bouncing , pubs/nightclubs . Not everyone's cup of tea , but good money .

Don't laugh, but relief milking ? Plenty of need .

Things to think about .
 
I know nothing about tillage but there's loads of contractors around here all doing the usual silage, bales, slurry, umbilical etc but there's one guy doesn't do any of that stuff. He has 2 excavators one mulching head the other with a tree shears thing and a mulching unit for a tractor. He has some kind of zero till grass reseeding gear and lime spreading kit and seems to be always busy. He does a good bit of work for the council with the mulching equipment.
So it's niche work but it seems to be keeping him busy.
 
Short answer , if you are in an area with any amount of dairy cows , you haven't a hope .
Any bit of land that comes up for rent will be taken by a dairy farmer , at twice what money its worth .
Lots of lads are taking lots of conacre for tillage . But they might make 40 or 50 an acre real profit , and have 300 acres of it , and or , their own owned land is carrying a lot of the cost .

You seem to be fearless , as regards facing into the innards of a CVX .You have tools.and a shed . Mechanics are impossible to get . Let the owner buy the parts , and you won't be carrying any risk , we'll a hell of a lot less than tillage in someone else's ground . You can do a few clutches etc first , and see how things go .

Lorry driving if you have the license .

Bouncing , pubs/nightclubs . Not everyone's cup of tea , but good money .

Don't laugh, but relief milking ? Plenty of need .

Things to think about .
I have enough to do myself nearly too much in fact.
There is myself and another full time and I have a lad with us 9 months of the year.
If we were to go at tillage for example I'd like to be in a position in say 5 years that I'd be able to pick and choose the hire work that would fit around the tillage work.
 
The short answer is no, but if you can find a niche market there is money, your climate is probably against you. It is very tough making money out of commodity tillage crops on rented land. I know a lot who have failed.
Is there Combines available to hire locally?
Is straw valuable locally?
Is slurry available locally?
Would wholecrop silage be saleable?
I am only guessing now, but would a rotation of Winter Oats (Likes a wet climate), followed by Winter Barley (early in and early out), followed by Kale/Rape for grazing by young stock, followed by wholecrop Combicrop, work locally?
Or Organic Oats, followed by Organic Malting Barley, followed by Red Clover?
This is the kind of thing I'm interested in.
There has to be demand for some sort of other type of tillage.
Are small acres of spuds viable?
Slurry you can get all you want of it.
Staw is making 20 a bale.
I'd absolutely love to go organic farming
 
I have enough to do myself nearly too much in fact.
There is myself and another full time and I have a lad with us 9 months of the year.
If we were to go at tillage for example I'd like to be in a position in say 5 years that I'd be able to pick and choose the hire work that would fit around the tillage work.

For every contractor , who started off with no owned land , and managed to buy some land , you will probably find two contractors who started with owned land , who sold sold some of it to stay contracting .
You seem to have got on very well in the last 5 odd years . New Fusion , Volvo loader , trailers , good few tractors , admittedly some needed work , but you don't seem afraid of work .

Don't end up going back ways, as in losing what you have accomplished so far ,to follow a dream which becomes a nightmare .
 
This is the kind of thing I'm interested in.
There has to be demand for some sort of other type of tillage.
Are small acres of spuds viable?
Slurry you can get all you want of it.
Staw is making 20 a bale.
I'd absolutely love to go organic farming
Small acres of spuds are very labour intensive, bigger acres can justify more mechanisation but there's still a lot of manual labour required. Don't forget you also need at least 4 times the land for the acres you are growing to be able to rotate every year. And growing them is the easy part, if I was considering growing spuds the first thing I'd do is buy a tonne and try to sell them. Then when you have them sold, buy another tonne and sell them. Repeat 10 times and you have sold an acre's worth of spuds. Maybe you'd find a market when you're so close to a reasonably large town, but it's hard going.
 
Could you do a deal with a customer maybe to put somthing in it for a year and you reseed it the following year free of charge, 4 or 5 acres Is all, you’d have nothing out of it bar and idea of whether you’d make anything out of taking a few acres/weather/difficulty cutting etc
 
Most successful contractor I know took on land here there and everywhere,little awkward fields around town and he then sold the grass off them to his best customers,he was lucky because some ground was fit for Maize,but his big break was taking land as payment for bad debt,he sold 14 acres of it for £30m for housing.
 
Most successful contractor I know took on land here there and everywhere,little awkward fields around town and he then sold the grass off them to his best customers,he was lucky because some ground was fit for Maize,but his big break was taking land as payment for bad debt,he sold 14 acres of it for £30m for housing.
That's about the best paying crop you can have to be honest
 
I made a thread about this a while back but it kind of got nowhere.
I'd be seriously interested in going farming at some sort of crop.
I'd like to have something else to have alongside the hire work, I haven't an acre of ground so that's a big disadvantage, I'm just wondering is it possible to make a reasonable amount of money from any type of tillage?
Bog Man and @gone make tillage look too easy . We have a way better climate and while the area is competitive for land dairy men and a few big beef guys seem content to buy in beet maize and straw rather than compete for land. You cannot let customers down while you go spray your barley or turn your own straw.
 
Other than milking cows,other farming is basically non profitable or slim margins.sfp,wages from outside farming prop most of it, theories about spreading costs over more acres keep fellas going along with pride.
If you want to go farming without land or payments work away but don't expect to make anything worthwhile from it.
As a farmer you will be a price taker,not an ideal place to be.
 
Bog Man and @gone make tillage look too easy . We have a way better climate and while the area is competitive for land dairy men and a few big beef guys seem content to buy in beet maize and straw rather than compete for land. You cannot let customers down while you go spray your barley or turn your own straw.
That’s a very good point, the pictures of the ploughing @gone had up this week wouldn’t be achievable at the best of times here. I still have land to put winter corn in and I’d want a good dry week before I could get greasy soil up that I’d get bullied for ploughing by the barons of the forum 👀
 
Small acres of spuds are very labour intensive, bigger acres can justify more mechanisation but there's still a lot of manual labour required. Don't forget you also need at least 4 times the land for the acres you are growing to be able to rotate every year. And growing them is the easy part, if I was considering growing spuds the first thing I'd do is buy a tonne and try to sell them. Then when you have them sold, buy another tonne and sell them. Repeat 10 times and you have sold an acre's worth of spuds. Maybe you'd find a market when you're so close to a reasonably large town, but it's hard going.
What is a tonne of spuds worth and what is an average yield from them?
 
Bog Man and @gone make tillage look too easy . We have a way better climate and while the area is competitive for land dairy men and a few big beef guys seem content to buy in beet maize and straw rather than compete for land. You cannot let customers down while you go spray your barley or turn your own straw.
To be fair I started with nothing and I understand how the world works.
I understand that it isn't all rosy, I enjoy being involved in agricultural land work, I like doing work for other people but I'd like to be able to farm on my own at either a big or small scale.
 
What is a tonne of spuds worth and what is an average yield from them?
@tractorted is the man to tell you, I wasn't involved with spuds for a while, probably anything from €30/t for cattle feed in a bad year to €1000/t if you sell them washed in 5kg bags. You'd probably be looking at a yield of 10t/ac of ware spuds, that's all off the top of my head, I could be wrong.
 
To be fair I started with nothing and I understand how the world works.
I understand that it isn't all rosy, I enjoy being involved in agricultural land work, I like doing work for other people but I'd like to be able to farm on my own at either a big or small scale.
There's nobody trying to rain on your parade. I'm in the very same boat myself, I'd like nothing more than to be farming myself but without owning any land yourself you're on a hiding to nothing trying to do it on rented ground. I have made several attempts at it over the years and the aspiration has been parked until the 6 numbers come up. @jf 850 mentioned contractors buying land from the proceeds of their contracting work in a post above, maybe in the 70's, 80's, early 90's but I can't think of anyone who has bought reasonable amounts of land from contracting alone in the last 20 or 25 years.
 
Contractor from beside @Kieran97 in roscommon is growing barley and spuds along the longford town bypass.its on rented ground as is alot of their ground up the country bar a farm they own in kildare too.they seem to be going on extremely well with the spud business selling at markets and at home.would be very great with there cousin.
If it can be done in north longford / roscommon it can't be to hard to replicate, only things is these lads are more that hardy goers
 
Green plants in a solar powered container to generate start up capital.

Seriously though, the barrier to entry is astronomical and increasing by the day
 
There's nobody trying to rain on your parade. I'm in the very same boat myself, I'd like nothing more than to be farming myself but without owning any land yourself you're on a hiding to nothing trying to do it on rented ground. I have made several attempts at it over the years and the aspiration has been parked until the 6 numbers come up. @jf 850 mentioned contractors buying land from the proceeds of their contracting work in a post above, maybe in the 70's, 80's, early 90's but I can't think of anyone who has bought reasonable amounts of land from contracting alone in the last 20 or 25 years.
I understand.
I'm not saying I think it's simple I know it's not.
The lads at it aren't exactly at it for the good of there health either.
 
Green plants in a solar powered container to generate start up capital.

Seriously though, the barrier to entry is astronomical and increasing by the day
It's to get going is the problem, if a lad was sure it would work out you'd have no problem pumping money into something.
 
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