Cut your hay costs to almost nothing using neighbor relationships, compost, compost tea, smart seeding, and used equipment.
Based on: How I Buy Hay for $2.90 Bale (Regenerative) by Justin Rhodes
▶ Watch the source video on YouTube
What if your hay bill was basically nothing? Not because you cut corners, but because you built a system so smart that every step pays for the next one. Most small farmers and homesteaders just accept that hay is expensive. They write the check every season, watch the pile shrink, and start over. But Justin Rhodes, one of the most-watched regenerative homesteading creators on YouTube, has been quietly doing it differently — and he breaks it all down in raw, live-action detail.
Here is the reality most people face: hay costs are one of the biggest recurring expenses on a small farm or homestead. Feed prices go up, pastures get depleted, and the treadmill never stops. You keep buying hay to feed animals whose manure you are not fully using, on pastures that could be growing more if you just had a system. It is exhausting, expensive, and it does not have to be this way.
Imagine instead walking a field you helped seed by hand, knowing the compost your own cows produced went back into that ground, knowing the neighbor's land you mow for free is giving you hundreds of bales a year, and knowing your entire hay operation — equipment included — works out to $2.90 a bale. That is not a fantasy. That is what Justin has built, step by step, on his family farm.
Justin has spent years documenting real regenerative agriculture on a working homestead with a real family, real breakdowns, and real results. He is not selling a course from a desk. He shows you the manure spreader, the compost tea barrel, the hand-seeding walk across a steep reclaimed pasture, and the neighbor conversation that started it all. His credibility comes from doing, not theorizing, and this checklist captures every strategy he shares.
This PDF checklist walks you through all five of Justin's cost-cutting strategies in the exact order he implements them: securing a free lease through genuine neighborly relationships, building a deep bedding compost system that costs nothing, applying compost tea to multiply soil microbes across large areas, choosing and hand-seeding the right seed mix for lasting pasture, and sourcing and negotiating used hay equipment at a fraction of retail. Every step includes the specific details, quantities, seed types, equipment names, and negotiating tactics straight from the video. Stop paying full price for hay. Use this checklist to build the system that brings that number down to almost nothing.
Every checklist item comes with actionable notes to guide you — things like "Don't forget to do this before you start," "Avoid this common mistake," or "Set a reminder for 30 days out." Nothing vague, just clear next steps.
+ 21 more action items inside...
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