First of all thanks to EVERYONE for sharing your thoughts and comments. I belong to several different forums (tractor, firearms, reloading, home theatre, photography, automotive, drums, guitar) and this is without question the friendliest forum that I belong to. People can discuss things civilly here without getting their shorts in a knot. You guys (and gals) are just terrific.
When we decided that we were going to retire in PEI and build our home there, there were only two must haves when we were looking for property. In order of importance, it must have a waterfront, and it must be reasonably close to our cottage. As it turns out the lot we purchased has 160' of waterfront and it's 7.5 miles from the cottage - three stop signs and one traffic light. If you are stopped by the traffic light it should take no longer than 12 minutes to commute. There were other like to haves that we had on our wish list such as; low taxes, 1 to 5 acres, having a great view, being close to the city, being close to the hospital, and being close to the airport. I can honestly say that we were fortunate to find a lot that checked all of those checkboxes also. Yes sometimes miracles to happen. The point I'm trying to make is that we only had two must haves items and everything else was a bonus.
The other thing that I immediately realized is that we would NEED a tractor of some sort and the needs were simple - snow removal and cutting grass. Everything else would be a nice to have. The problem was I knew NOTHING about tractors, not a single thing. This forum has helped tremendously with the theoretical fundamentals of tractors, but I was still struggling with correctly sizing the tractor. Based on the numerous threads I've read, so are many others, experienced with tractors or not.
Now after asking a several questions and reading many threads now I believe that I'm a position to make my final decision as to what to buy. I've decided to stick with my two original primary needs (snow and grass) and throw in one nice to have item - a FEL. The more I read here, the more I began to realize that a FEL would be important to have. Between the home construction and landscaping a FEL moved up from a nice to have to a must have. Everything else would be considered a nice to have, but I don't really need it. I also have to save some money to build the house.
I've decide to rule out the B series tractors and go with the
BX2370. Having only a 1 acre lot a B series tractor is just too much tractor, an overkill IMHO. Heck, there were many times that I thought to myself that even a BX tractor may be overkill for a 1 acre lot. If it wasn't for the demanding snow blower power requirements the BX could also be viewed as overkill.
So its going to be
BX2370 with a HD Front Snow Blower, MMM and a FEL.
Thanks again for everyones input and I apologize for the length of this post.
Cheers!
-- Bill --