As somebody else said on here, "the amount of work a tractor can do is determined by it's weight, how fast is does that work is determined by it's horsepower".
If you are going to put out a three acre garden to sell out of then you will be using your tractor every single day next summer in that garden. Get one sized for your garden work and a cheap rotary mower for the fields. Don't think you have to have an expensive heavy duty mower either. Those are for commercial use on the side of a road in every day use. A light duty mower will work fine for you as long as it has the stump jumper. I have a Howse 5-foot light duty mower that now sells for $895 at Kough Equipment in Farmington, Kentucky. Six foot is about a hundred more. Anything I have managed to push over with my 2500+ pound tractor it will chop up. I have hit half buried cross ties, rocks, stump, etc.. My little Kioti doesn't have enough horsepower to even break the shear bolt but it and the mower keep on going. If all you are mowing is 15 acres twice a year that is all you need. WHY spend the extra money.
I raised a small garden for years. When I retired I put out maybe a quarter acre at my mother's farm (I live on a one acre lot). I did this for four or five years until my wife quit her part time summer University job. It was three days a week four to six hours a day. The year I had the largest garden we took off on a two week vacation and I never got the grass back under control. BUT, I had enough to furnish my and my two daughter's households all the corn, green beans, okra, tomatoes, and cucumbers they could stand. This included canning and freezing. Just make sure you plant stuff so it doesn't all come in at once. If you do you may end up living by yourself after your wife leaves after the third twelve/sixteen hour day in a row picking and breaking green beans. After the first year I learned to plant five different varieties of corn that took from 59 to 110 days to mature. Makes life a lot easier and you will have market corn for months. But that first year....with it all coming in at once.....it was a nightmare.
If you do decide on the large garden I highly suggest you watch this guy, webcajun, on his youtube channel. His motto is, "I'm old, I'm crippled, and I'm lazy and this is how I do it". He has wide spaces between rows, picks sitting in a golf cart, and uses the correct equipment.
And this is the bible of Kentucky garden growers. It shouldn't be that much difference from where you are located.
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/id/id128/id128.pdf All the information you need for yields, planting times, planting amounts, etc. is there. Well for Kentucky anyway.
Some ideas in no particular order.
If you buy the tractor new get a front end loader. It will be MUCH cheaper if purchased with the tractor. A FEL makes a tractor into a versatile do it all helper. My little Kioti is used much, much more than the twice as large Ford because it has the loader.
A smaller tractor is much easier to use in a garden or other cultivating jobs. There is a reason IH sold all those Cub Farmalls for tobacco and garden cultivation in the fifties and sixties. A larger tractor will be faster, etc., but you will screw up some rows using it. Been there, done that!!
Get the HST if you are going to be using the tractor in a garden or mowing around obstacles.
Get the HST if you are going to do ground engaging jobs like moving dirt or gravel. Once you start changing directions every few seconds the HST will make life much easier.
Get the HST if your wife is going to use it.
Your wife will love the HST especially on a smaller tractor. Some weeks my wife starts and stops mine many more times than I do. She moves flower pots, potting soil, bird baths, flowers she has dug up, trash bags, and anything else she can get into the bucket. Eight year old granddaughter putted around the yard all summer with the bucket full of water watering the flowers. Had to put a few back in the ground after 55-gallons dumped on them but it taught her how to handle the machinery and kept her out of trouble otherwise.
Get four wheel drive. You will never regret it.
Forget the old Ford. I have spent hours on one as a teenager and younger. They are designed for row cropping. Which means they are designed for pulling ground engaging implements in a straight line across a large field. Use them for anything else and they are lacking.
After much serious thought and several beers I have decided that you need a 25 to 30 horsepower Kioti (my favorite), Kubota, Deere, or whatever. It must have a front end loader, tiller, one row cultivator, sub soiler, hiller, blade, and a five foot (25-hp) or six foot (30-hp) rotary mower. It MUST have a three range hydrostatic transmission. First for ground engaging, second for mowing, third for transport.
Also a 16'-18' trailer to move it about with.
And a pickup truck to pull trailer and haul all that produce to market.
And a shed to store it in.
MAN, I am having fun spending your money.
Before you buy I suggest you visit Metropolis Illinois and Little Tractor. They sell Kioti. A few years ago they had to stop putting prices on the Net because all the other dealers were complaining that people would shop a tractor locally then buy it online from Little and have it shipped cheaper than the local dealer.
Clear as mud isn't it.
Hope you have a wonderful day.
RSKY
P.S. I am on a 'weight limit' due to minor surgery. So I can't do anything except fold laundry, cook, and be a know-it-all on TBN. Thanks for giving me a problem to worry about for the day.
