it does not work that way in real life. it's two hours here, 4 hours there, sit a month, do a week, etc.
Now if a person is building a finite thing like a house on a lot, or doing a single project like running an irrigation pipe through then renting is the ticket. "farming" is not that oorganized in most cases.
Yeah, thats pretty well how it works. We have a Deere 590D, Deere 550G, 20 ton tag, and a Ford L9000 dump truck on a dairy farm that we bought about 12 years ago. All were bought for one project that was going to cover a few months worth of work in phases. We bought all of the equipment for less than what the excavation portion of the quote came in at. My uncle has extensive excavation experience from 20 years in the industry before returning to farming so we had the experience to do the work. Once that project finished, the machines mostly sit, but, BUT they're too damned handy to ever be sold off. We got by just fine without those machines before, but life is so much nicer ever since they came out. One off drainage projects got done. Fence rows got cleared. Our driveways are in way better condition and actually get regular maintenance. We've used the excavator as a crane in multiple instances where we wouldn't have had the equipment to do a job otherwise. On a whim, we were able to extend a concrete pad for ag silage bags last minute. Haul our own gravel, crushed concrete, etc. Use the tag trailer to pickup/delivery other equipment to save on delivery fees. Haul more bales, reshape our silage poles for better drainage with less spoilage, the list just goes on. Most of these projects were all afternoon deals where we had time and had been thinking "man, that would be nice", or "hey, we can do that job ourselves and get it over with"
We had a center pivot get stuck one day in a mucky area of the field. We got it unstuck, then hauled the excavator down, dug out the trench, hauled in a couple truck loads of good gravel, filled it and had the pivot passing that spot be end of day.
Some days, it pays dividends to just have that equipment readily available.
