Buying Advice Rookie here...am I crazy? Help needed...quick!

[def]

So, as the title suggests, complete rookie here...never owned a tractor, never drove a tractor but I did work for William McCormick Blair who's relatives founded International Harvester. Blair was a descendant of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper. There were Farmall tractors all over Blair farm. I never so much as rode on one.

So, now that I have retired and have a few acres (about 8), I'm going to plant an orchard, garden, put in a drive and dig a swim pond.

Question is how much tractor and what brand do I need (I have been looking at Mahindra and New Holland)? Also, I am thinking that used equipment would be fine for my projects. Your thoughts here please.

Here are some details;

1- Land is mostly flat with a steep ravine (I believe the locals call this a "holler" or "crick").
2- Currently the land is overgrown with brush (3-5 feet high), wild grass and some small saplings (2-3 inches).
3- Some lawn currently maintained with a 42 inch riding mower.
4- Some mature trees that will be cut, the stumps pulled with chain and tractor or ground out with a rental grinder.
5- The soil is somewhat rocky and most of it never tilled.

Here are the tasks I see for my project;

1- Clear the land of brush and saplings (flail mower with mulching duck foot blades?)
2- Cut med medium and large trees and remove stumps (pull or grind them?)
3- Grade land and establish drainage (box blade with rippers, FEL?)
4- Break up and prepare soil for planting (What implement(s) do I need?)
5- Spray trees for disease and spray property for bug control (homemade sprayer; gasoline powered pressure washer and 55 gallon plastic drum).
6- Maintenance and mowing. (Flail mower with mowing blades or belly mower, or both?)

So that's pretty much it.

Am I crazy? Or am I on the right track or should I just ride my motorcycle off into the sunset or buy a boat instead (retired US Navy) and sail off into the sunset?

I used to repair RADAR until they did away with vacuum tubes. Now, I repair my own equipment which includes a diesel motor home, two automobiles a BMW motorcycle and other various mechanical gear. A diesel tractor would not be a challenge.

I'll await with interest all your comments and suggestions. Thank you in advance.

 

[Bird]

I usually tell people you can never get a tractor that's too big.:laughing: But I'll start by suggesting something in the 30 hp range, plus or minus a bit. I think John Deere, Kubota, & New Holland are still the big 3, but as you can see on Tractorbynet, there are lots of other brands with happy owners, too. And while you may never have to go to a dealer for parts/repairs/service, I'd prefer owning a brand for which there is a local dealer.

And while I've never been in the Navy or repaired RADAR, I HAVE fixed TVs in the days when they had vacuum tubes, I've owned 2 motorhomes, but both were gasoline powered, and I've owned one Zundapp, one Yamaha, three Honda, and one BMW motorcycle.

When I had 10 acres in Navarro County, I bought a new Kubota B7100 (13hp), later moved up to a B2710 (27 hp) and found the 2710 to be great for my uses.

 

[vtsnowedin]

It sounds like you plan to make the whole eight acres into one big lawn.:thumbsdown: Those mature trees provide shade and cooler temperatures, help hold soil moisture and prevent erosion. If they are in good shape and not in the way of an important pursuit I'd leave them be. If they happen to be on the steep sides of the holler that goes double as that is probably the best and highest use of that ground. Also controlling bugs on eight acres is a fools errand that will do more harm then good. This is not a navy ship or base. Keep them out of the buildings and the patio but outside of that they belong there as much as you do. As to tractors any used or new tractor capable of running the shredder /cutter you want to use should also get all you other tasks done. 30 HP sounds about right.

 

[kneedeep]

Buy from a local dealer that is established in case you need parts and or service. front wheel drive, loader, backhoe are very useful for projects like you stated. 30+ HP will do a lot of dirt work with the right implements.

Good Luck!

 

[/pine]

I would visit all the dealers and take a hard copy of your OP with you...test drive all their recommendations...see what you do and don't like...if your budget allows rent a few different (sized) tractors with different attachments and spend a day on them getting a feel for the working end...

good luck...

 

[GPintheMitten]

Buy a motorcycle and a sailboat. That's what I had before I bought a tractor. Now I don 't have either.

 

[newbury]

<snip>
Here are some details;

1- Land is mostly flat with a steep ravine (I believe the locals call this a "holler" or "crick").
2- Currently the land is overgrown with brush (3-5 feet high), wild grass and some small saplings (2-3 inches).
3- Some lawn currently maintained with a 42 inch riding mower.
4- Some mature trees that will be cut, the stumps pulled with chain and tractor or ground out with a rental grinder.
5- The soil is somewhat rocky and most of it never tilled.

What do you term a "mature tree"? Big oaks and maples push 80' tall, 4 or 5 feet DBH in Alabama.

Here are the tasks I see for my project;

1- Clear the land of brush and saplings (flail mower with mulching duck foot blades?)
2- Cut med medium and large trees and remove stumps (pull or grind them?)
3- Grade land and establish drainage (box blade with rippers, FEL?)
4- Break up and prepare soil for planting (What implement(s) do I need?)
5- Spray trees for disease and spray property for bug control (homemade sprayer; gasoline powered pressure washer and 55 gallon plastic drum).
6- Maintenance and mowing. (Flail mower with mowing blades or belly mower, or both?)

Hire a crew w/ a dozer to do the big trees and grading.

Let us know what you want to plant, trees, vegetables, what?

Give us some pics of what you have to tackle and what your resources are.

Without knowing more I'd say start looking in the 35HP range.

Good luck. It gets warm in the summer there - I've my land in NE Mississippi.

 

[def]

Great stuff so far. Please keep it coming.

As for the garden, vegetables mostly plus some potatoes and some tomatoes. But, the main thing is the orchard. Peaches, lemons, grapes.

 

[deerseeker001]

Welcome from Wisconsin

 

[grm61]

Get you a Kioti DK 40/45/50 with a backhoe.

A smaller tractor you could get by with with, but with Kioti for instance, by moving up to the 40 horse frame size gives you over twice the lift capacity for about 4000.00 more than the 30 horse frame size.

The DK series will lift 2765lbs to full height, most 30-35 horse tractors range from 1100 to 1400 lbs of lift.

You never know what you might want to do, or build, or lift someday.
Better to have to much than not enough...Safer too:thumbsup:

Good luck

 

[joshuabardwell]

If you mean to use the tractor to pull stumps, I'd suggest getting a backhoe. Pulling a large stump with a chain is most likely to just make your wheels spin, unless you have some way of cutting the roots and digging out the ball. A backhoe is a slow way of pulling stumps, but given time, you will eventually dig out the root ball. Far better, if you have a lot of trees to take out, to hire a dozer to do the work. A dozer will do in one afternoon what it would take you many, many weekends to do with your tractor.

A belly mower is the ultimate cutting implement on a tractor, but a tractor, especially a 30 HP one, is not an ideal mower for lawns, because of its size and weight (IMO, of course). For fields and pasture, maybe. If you already mean to get a flail mower to rough-cut the pasture, you should at least give it a try on your lawn. If you were planning on getting a rotary cutter for the fields, I wouldn't suggest trying that on your lawn, but if anything is going to be a jack-of-all-trades for both finish and rough-cut mowing, it'll be a flail. If you want a dedicated lawn mower, you may want to consider taking the same money you would put into a belly mower for your tractor and getting a riding mower instead. It all depends on exactly how your lawn is laid out.

For grading, a box blade and/or a grader blade will be great. The box blade has the advantage of being able to move large amounts of soil from one place to another. The grader blade is a bit more versatile, as it may be able to be angled, tilted, etc... in ways that a box blade can't. The FEL is not a spectacular grading implement, although it can be pressed into service. The FEL's main purpose is to carry/move loose material, not to break ground.

When you say, "establish drainage," you may want to look into a middle-buster and/or a "potato plow". They are similar implements, just with a different shaped blade on them. Sometimes you can get one tool with changeable blade to do both jobs. A potato plow is good for digging a narrow ditch, like a drainage ditch.

There are a bunch of different ways to break soil for planting. A plow, followed by a disc is traditional. A tiller is another way to go. A tractor in the 30 HP range will pull up to a 2-bottom plow. I'm not sure what size/gang of disc you can pull. A nice thing about the tiller is that the PTO does all the hard work, and you can get by with a smaller tractor, compared to a plow and a disc where you just need the tractor's weight to create the traction. But a tiller is more expensive and requires more maintenance than a plow and disc. Personally, for a small garden, I would get a tiller. If I was going to do a larger garden or food plot, the tiller would be too slow and I would consider the plow/disc. For seeding a food plot or similar, a cultipacker is a very useful implement, but it's not generally used for general-purpose gardening.

 

[newbury]

Great stuff so far. Please keep it coming.

As for the garden, vegetables mostly plus some potatoes and some tomatoes. But, the main thing is the orchard. Peaches, lemons, grapes.

European grapes or Muscadine?

Regardless, if your not lifting 1 ton logs or lifting 1500 pound round bales with the FEL a 30 to 40 hp tractor should do.
You list your locality as

The woods and mountans of Alabama

If your up in the Northeast I've seen a lot of used Case and IH tractors for sale there.

Of course remember a tractor is just an engine on wheels. What really makes it useful are the attachments. Some people make the mistake of spending all their $$ on the tractor and don't have enough left over for the attachments, which an be expensive by themselves. Some attachments can often be found in fair shape used, such as plows and discs, others such as backhoes are rare.

 

[def]

Josh, great stuff...thanks. Grapes.....likely Muscadine. Your right, the implements are the tools. The tractor just pulls or pushes them.

 

[paulfun9]

Your description although good still leaves some blanks in my mind.

My recommendation would really depend on the definition of "some mature trees" and " somewhat rocky"

For instance you description could be used to define two of my properties but one would and did require the use of a big crawler /loader/backhoe along with some help from a friends dozer to first tame the land before the tractor could even begin to be of any real use. The other property could have easily been taken care of with the DK40se I just purchased but I actually used a little JD755 and every once in a while brought in My friends JCB backhoe or my own International depending on which one was closer and was less costly to get here at any given point in time.

 

[def]

It sounds like you plan to make the whole eight acres into one big lawn.:thumbsdown: Those mature trees provide shade and cooler temperatures, help hold soil moisture and prevent erosion. If they are in good shape and not in the way of an important pursuit I'd leave them be. If they happen to be on the steep sides of the holler that goes double as that is probably the best and highest use of that ground. Also controlling bugs on eight acres is a fools errand that will do more harm then good. This is not a navy ship or base. Keep them out of the buildings and the patio but outside of that they belong there as much as you do. As to tractors any used or new tractor capable of running the shredder /cutter you want to use should also get all you other tasks done. 30 HP sounds about right.

Don't worry, I'll not take out all the trees, only those that have been compromised by lightening, wind damage or other trees. I too see the value in keeping trees for shade and erosion control. Most of the land will end up with fruit trees, grapes and some veggies...grass is low on the list.

 

[def]

Your description although good still leaves some blanks in my mind.

My recommendation would really depend on the definition of "some mature trees" and " somewhat rocky"

For instance you description could be used to define two of my properties but one would and did require the use of a big crawler /loader/backhoe along with some help from a friends dozer to first tame the land before the tractor could even begin to be of any real use. The other property could have easily been taken care of with the DK40se I just purchased but I actually used a little JD755 and every once in a while brought in My friends JCB backhoe or my own International depending on which one was closer and was less costly to get here at any given point in time.

Mature trees are those larger than 12 inches at the base. Many of the trees un the property are not hardwoods. There is some pine but mostly those trees that drop those little seed things that look like sea urchins. Of sourse, I would not attempt to pull stumps too large for a tractor and I agree, the best initial approach might be to get a dozer to do the initial clearing and tree removal.

The area where I live (western Blount County, AL near the Warrior River) was mostly strip mined of coal many years ago. Much of the land was restored and reclaimed after it had been stripped. This property of mine was used to graze and move the mules into the coal washer once located just behind my land. It was not stripped according to those who know the area. However, there are coal remnants on the land along with rocks. I'm liable to find a decayed mule and coal bits once I start digging.

 

[newbury]

grass is low on the list.

That's where a lot of problems come up - trying to maintain big lawns with 40HP tractors.
Like Bird wrote, you are a strong candidate for a 35HP plus tractor.

Manufacturer should depend more on what dealers are near you and your comfort level with ordering parts over the net and DIY.

Here's 3 samples that may be within your reach:
Kubota 3400 4x4 Hydrostatic Tractor
Kubota MX5100 4WD Tractor, loader, bucket, bushhog
------- 41 HP Tractor - R4041 L.S Tractor -------

Sweetgum?

 

[SHORT KID]

def--- To answer your question, yes you are crazy!!!!!!! I would concentrate on that two wheeler and motor home and enjoy life. Anyway thanks for your service. You are going about it in a good way though, by asking lots of questions before spending money. I would befriend some locals, and get their input about area first. Chances are they forgot more than you will ever know about your area. As far as equipment, stop by local farms and introduce yourself, they will know where and what to buy. Stay crazy and you will also have to learn to talk like the locals before they start to trust you. This advice doesn't have to be taken cause I am just a crazy veteran with a tractor,loader,backhoe, motor home and a motorcycle. Afer all this keeps the local economy stimulated. My son just retired from the Air Force and he will probably follow suit, again THANKS FOR YOUR SERVICE.

 

[GPintheMitten]

Ok Ok get the tractor but if you don't get a motorcycle AND a sailboat with it at least get a sailboat.

 

[def]

Ok Ok get the tractor but if you don't get a motorcycle AND a sailboat with it at least get a sailboat.

Already got the motorcycle, a BMW R1150GS oilhead...it will last me the rest of my riding days...as for a boat, I have crewed in plenty of rag boats (C and E scows) all over No Illinois and Wisconsin...we used to race Buddy Melges frequently...I prefer one of these...



Yup, Sweetgum....Ouch!