Equipment Spotlight

The 4 Wheel Inline Rake: The Honest Workhorse of Hay Season

By Phil Livengood, Small Farm Innovations

Ask me what the hardest part of putting up good hay is, and most folks are surprised by the answer. It isn't the mowing. It isn't the baling. It's the raking. Get your windrow right and everything downstream goes smooth. Get it wrong and you'll fight your baler all afternoon. That's why I want to spend a little time on a machine that's been quietly earning its keep on small farms for years now — the 4 Wheel Inline Rake.

Small Farm Innovations got its very start selling a 4 wheel rake, and to this day the inline wheel rake remains one of the most sensible, dependable tools we put in a farmer's hands. If you're baling with a mini round baler or a 3×3, this is very likely the rake you're looking for.

Why the Inline Rake Just Works

The idea behind an inline rake is simple, and simple is a good thing on a farm. Four wheels line up in a row and sweep your cut forage — hay, straw, whatever you've laid down — into a clean, well-formed windrow that's ready to bale. No PTO, no complicated hydraulics for the basic job, no fuss. The wheels are ground-driven, so they turn as you pull, and that keeps things reliable and easy on your tractor.

Where the inline design really shines is maneuverability. It'll rake clean into tight corners and right along your field edges, where a bigger rig would leave hay behind. And because it handles the crop gently, you get less wrapping and less leaf loss — and leaves are where a lot of your feed value lives.

One Rake, Many Field Conditions

Here's the part I like best. The 4 Wheel Inline Rake adjusts to your field, not the other way around. You can run a full working width of about 8 feet 6 inches, then when conditions change, pull a pin, swing the arm in, and bring it down to right around 4½ feet. That flexibility is a big deal when you're matching your windrow to your baler's pickup.

On top of that, the wheel angles are adjustable, so you can fine-tune how the rake feeds hay to match different balers and different field conditions. And a bonus most folks don't think about: you can set the arms to spread the hay back out to help it dry down faster. It's not a dedicated tedder — I won't tell you it is — but in a pinch it'll help you chase moisture out of a heavy cutting.

What It Pairs With

This rake was built with the small-farm hay operation in mind. It's a natural match for:

• Mini round balers — the everyday pairing, and the one we set up most often
• 3×3 round balers — plenty of capacity for a bigger bale
• 4×5 round balers — some of our customers run it here successfully too

Straight Talk on the Learning Curve

Now let me be honest with you, the way I'd want somebody to be honest with me. A wheel rake takes a little practice to master — more than mowing, more than baling. It's ground-driven, so on sandy or dusty ground it can pick up a bit of dirt, and it loses some efficiency on real sharp turns. None of that is a dealbreaker. It just means the rake is the tool you'll spend a season getting good with.

The trickiest situation is a customer who buys late in the season when the grass has gotten tall and thick, then tries to feed a big windrow into a small pickup. My advice for those first tough passes: raise the baler up a touch and skim the top of the windrow. It's a little demanding on a small tractor, but it takes a lot of the stress out of your first bales.

And here's the good news — you won't figure it out alone. When you buy a hay package from us, we train you on it. I tell everybody the same three things: you learn how to mow when you rake, you learn how to rake when you bale, and practice makes perfect. Stick with it and you'll be laying down a beautiful windrow before you know it.

Is It the Right Rake for You?

If you're running a small-to-mid-size hay operation, you want low cost and low horsepower requirements, and you're baling with a mini round or 3×3 baler, the 4 Wheel Inline Rake is hard to beat for the money. It's simple, it's dependable, and it's built to keep working season after season.

Give us a call and let's talk about your fields, your baler, and what's going to make your hay season easier. That's what we're here for — large to small, we cover it all.