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Hay cutting


Angie
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We have six plus acres of land which up until 3 years ago was grazed by a French local who breeds horses. Then he asked if rather than graze the horses he could leave the grass to grow and then cut it for bales which he subsequently did.  He stored the bales on our land and collected as and when he needed them.  This worked fine for the first couple of years but last year he left the grass and just brought he horses back intermittently; our land now looks really scruffy - half eaten in some places and exceptionally long in others.  He has said he would like to keep to this new arrangement but we are not happy about this.  We have said, one or the other.

We have seen the fields around us being cut by combines and baled up and taken away and a friend suggested that we ask one of these guys to do our fields as well and let them have the bales for doing the job.  We get around 30 of those large round bales per year.

Does anyone know whether this is the done thing and if so, whether I just go up to the chaps in the field and direct them towards our plot?!!!

 

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Hi Angie

We have 6ha of land and it is mowed by a local farmer and baled. It sounds like the arrangement you had initially? It has worked really well for us. He takes the bales away within a week of cutting the grass. However, one caveat - we were advised by our notaire when we bought the property to have a yearly contract with the farmer. Apparently, if you allow someone to use your land for x number of years without a contract, they have rights to it - which could have implications when you sell, or try to stop them using your land. So we have a contract which I reproduce each year, and our guy is very willing to sign it.
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Angie, I don't think a combine harvester is what you need. A combine is a machine for harvesting and threshing grain, and spews out the straw stalks behind. These are collected and baled by another machine.

But you are dealing with grass, not corn. For hay, you need to get someone with just a cutter; then I presume the grass will have to lie there to dry for a bit and be turned, before it can be baled. I am not sure how keen somebody would be to take the hay rather than payment though. Isn't it a bit late for HAYmaking? I thought it was usually cut in about June. I wonder if the quality deteriorates by August?

Angela (another one)
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Hay should be made before midsummer to get the best nutritional values. August hay is usually pretty rubbish. Loiseau's comments on hay making are pretty accurate but it does need to be turned several time while drying to get a decent product.
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  • 1 month later...

Thanks everyone for all your advice.  I think the reason it was left so long this year was because of the awful wet summer and the grass just didn't dry out sufficiently to be cut.  We have now spoken to him and said that in future it needs to be cut and taken away by end June as we do not want it left like this during our summer holidays - he has agreed to this.  We shall see how it works out!

Yes, we have a letter from him to say that he uses it as a "commodat" and has no interest in the land which we got him to sign 3 or 4 years ago on our notaire's advice.  However, I think from what you say, we shall ask him to renew it annually. 

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