2 wheel or 4 wheel?

[arrows]

I'm starting a vegetable market farm this year, and in my original plan, I'd planned 30" beds with a walk behind tractor, Berta rotary plow, power harrow, and Berta flail mower. Then I called EarthTools. I said I'd be cultivating 2 acres. They said to look into 4 wheeled tractors, that the 2-wheelers would take too much time and be pretty hard on the body after all that tilling. So I redesigned everything for 48" beds and started researching tractors. I'm about to make a bunch of calls to craigslist ads, but am having second thoughts.

First of all, the cost will ultimately work out to be the same, because I'm looking at tractors no more than $4000, and I'd be using a cheap chisel plow. A barn is also available for storage of large equipment. For context, the property I'm leasing as a whole is 33 acres, most of which is pasture and forest. If the vegetable operation needs to expand, there is an additional field with about 3 acres of usable land, though currently growing some of the biggest autumn olives I've ever seen. For now that field will be used as pasture, along with a couple other pastures. The stocking rate will be pretty low the first couple years until they start churning out more babies, and I plan on getting Jim Gerrish's book "Kick the Hay Habit" so that I'm not so reliant on haymaking.

Here are some reservations I have about 4 wheel tractors:
- I am not a mechanic. Yes I can change oil and follow maintenance instructions, but whenever I've tried to "fix" things on my truck, I usually end up extremely frustrated and messing up.
- The soil I'm working with is gorgeous alluvial loam, and there's one spot with tractor (or truck?) ruts that are worryingly deep, showing how much compaction can happen. The soil overall is not compacted at all, and I want to keep it that way as much as possible. (This field was worked a few years back, but has otherwise lain fallow essentially for decades)
- Land would not be used as efficiently as it could be. Tractors need a wide turning radius at the end of each bed. On the flipside, I'm skeptical of the current trend towards super-intensive plant spacing. Root competition is a problem with intensive spacing, fixed only by running the irrigation pump daily (which means fuel $ used) and copious amounts of expensive compost and fertilizer. OTOH, weeds may be more of a problem with wider spacings. I'm trying to mitigate weeds by using stale seedbed techniques and (once the weed seedbank is reduced) no till cover crop mulch left on top of the soil. Probably landscape fabric will be used as well.

Here are some reservations I have about 2 wheel tractors:
- My time will not be used efficiently. Because I live in a "foodie" area that is already well-served by vegetable farms, I have to be a marketing guru in order to survive, so most of my time has to be spent marketing and selling, not slowly walking behind a tractor. I guess this is my main concern - so for those of you who have used both kinds of tractors, what difference do you see in time? If you have both kinds of tractors, what jobs do you assign to your BCS/Grillo vs. the 4-wheeler?
- Because I'm also responsible for maintaining fence lines all around the whole property, a bush hog would be more appropriate. And if the livestock can't eat all the pasture, whatever's left over will need to be mown/bushhogged once or twice a year. All the pastures together are about 13 acres (according to GIS, I haven't measured them on the ground yet). This could be hired out if necessary, but I don't know how much that would cost.

Thank you for any advice you may have, and I'll be sure to let you know what I end up doing.

 

[farmerboybill]

The biggest need you have for a 4 wheel tractor is primary tillage and pasture mowing (and, you didn't mention it, but pulling wagons, trailers, etc). Seedbed prep and cultivating would be adequately covered with a walk-behind. $4000 is gonna get you a pretty poor 4 wheel tractor for what you want to do. Ideally, the tractor will have live PTO, live hydraulics (preferably dual hydraulics), 3 point hitch, diesel, and be a row-crop utility. Diesel isn't greatly important as far as doing the work, but new gasoline has such a short shelf life that it makes gasoline engines harder to keep running if you aren't fastidious about keeping the fuel fresh. A diesel tractor can sit for quite a long time with old diesel in it and start right up. I'm thinking you'll need to be closer to the $10k range to get these features. There's also a lot of models that appear inexpensive, but are so because they aren't good machines. For example, John Deere 2000 series tractors (you can't break a good one, and you can't fix a bad one), and anything John Deere made after 1995. Also the N Series Fords are way over-hyped. What is the most common market-garden tractor in your area?

So, could you hire the four-wheel tractor work done for the first few years? It shouldn't be hard to find someone who will mow your pasture twice a year and till your garden once a year. You could then buy the walk-behind for usual use, get practice on maintaining and repairing it, and spend more time researching the right four wheel tractor for you to buy in a couple years.

 

[arrows]

For cultivation, some tractors I've seen around here are the AC "G" and Cubs. For smaller market gardens, either BCS or no tractor at all, believe it or not (unless you count rototillers). But for primary tillage, mm, I guess JD or Kubota. You can still find old Fords in use, and that's what I was leaning towards (the 660 has live PTO). If the farmer isn't independently wealthy, they'll typically hire out big tractor work (if it needs to be done at all... some farmers are only working with 1/2 acre or so, so obviously a BCS works for that). I guess that's what I'll end up doing- I'm just so exhausted by whiplash about equipment decisions.

 

[jcraftenworth]

doing the same here, and I'd say the #1 timesaving tip is transplanting into landscape fabric, it's superior to plastic mulch in that it stops weeds, allows water to pass through, is reusable for many many years, and the spacing only needs to be burned into the fabric once using some sort of wood template, after that the spacing is done for the life of the fabric. Works for anything that can be transplanted, does not work for carrots, radishes, beets, beens, that are typically direct seeded. I realized that 75 percent of the stuff in my 1/3rd of an acre garden was transplanted in this season, so next season I'll be weeding 75 percent less! Take that time and try to sell some of this produce! (and you might want to be careful unless you have buyers lined up, the guy who wrote The Market Gardener sells in the six figure range and has his hands full with 1.5 acres or so, I think they have 4-5 workers as well including he and his wife. it's better to grow to meet market demand, rather than starting big and hoping...it can be a lot of work for nothing when nothing sells. 2 acres fully cultivated could easily produce hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of produce)

you can do 2 or 4 wheel tractor, but in the beds, the 2 wheel will be easier to handle. heck joel even sells a little cultivator for weeding several rows at once. rotary plow is better than any 4 wheel tool for maintaining the raised beds. After seeing several youtube vids of it in action, I'm sure it could break up all the sod you need. If it's a little slower than a tractor pulled plow and disc it makes up for a lot of it with the fact you don't have to disc it as it's pretty much ready to go. And then realize, that while I did find some small rototillers and even the rinaldi power harrow in a 3 pt tractor version, the fact was they cost more than the versions for the bcs, the 2 wheel tractor gets you implements sized perfectly for 30" raised beds, which is what you want, any bigger than that and you can't easily reach to the center of the bed by hand and it makes it harder to jump across the beds etc.

If you have to do a lot of field mowing or haying, then you'll want a 4 wheel tractor on top of the 2 wheel, or else you'll want a 4 wheel only operation. But frankly I think you could find an older tractor up to the job that will cost you less than the two wheel tractor. Farmall H? 1000-1500 bucks. Farmall M? Same. People seem to like the cute cubs and they seem to go for 2500-3000. No insult tho, it is quite capable and probably the best small scale cultivating tractor. Allis chalmers B is very similar to Cub and a bit cheaper. Old ford utility tractor 1500-3000. I can tell you straight off the Cub, B and even N series tractors (Ford N series just barely, not a lot of wiggle room) will straddle a 30" raised bed with 18" walkways as long as it's early in the season (when plants start growing partially into the walkways that's another issue) . Soil compaction is really not an issue as long as you have the wheels in the walkway and not driving on the planting bed. The used haymaking/mowing equpment will be vastly cheaper for a 4 wheel tractor because of all the decades of good used stuff out there, plus way faster than the bcs. Here's a used bcs haymaking package:

BCS 852 walk-behind tractor with 13hp Honda engine, manual start, 5x10x20" wheels, with quick-coupling PTO mount.......Price (for tractor only): $3300
71" Double-Action Sickle Bar Mower with quick coupling.....Price (for sickle only): $2000
60" MOLON Hayrake/Tedder with quick-coupling mount.....Price (for rake only): $2000
CAEB Round Haybaler with Gathering wheels and quick-coupling mount....Price (for baler only): $7900

PRICE FOR ALL ITEMS TOGETHER: $14,400 (CURRENT Earth Tools sale price for all items, with associated accessories: $18,019)

In my area, I could get you a more capable 4 wheel tractor haymaking package for 3-5 thousand dollars, including tractor and hay equipment.

 

[farmerboybill]

Arrow,

I don't know Ford tractors, but the little bit of searching I did on the 660 seems like it'd be a capable machine with everything I mentioned, except for the diesel engine. There's one on CL in Morganton NC for $3500.

But, it sounds to me like you aren't really convinced you want a four-wheel tractor. I still say you might be best off to hire primary work done (especially when it comes to mowing the autumn olive), then own a two wheel for close-in work. If you're going to work in permanent raised beds, you aren't really going to be doing 2 acres. It's going to be a full-time job, and then some. But all farming is. I doubt I work less than 60 hours on a light week. I'm picking eggs every Sunday, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving and on Easter. Yesterday, I shelled 10 acres of corn, and have 30 to go, then 40 acres of beans, then plant 40 acres each of rye and wheat. And it goes on.

If you really want to do this at a low cost, look for a used walk-behind. You'll likely have to buy the power harrow (ask me my opinion of walk behind tractor power harrows, if you want to) and the rotary plow new, but you might be able to snag a good used BCS 830, 850, 852, 853, 900 series or Grillo 107d or 131 for around half of new. Better yet, maybe work out an agreement with a neighbor or two to share a machine. The biggest mistake I see people who are new to market gardening do is spend too much on the front side. You drop 6 -10 grand on this machine, and you're starting out in a hole. FSA offers low interest microloans to beginning farmers, but it's a bit of a pain to get in, and you still have to pay it back. I'm not saying don't buy it, I'm just saying you should have a plan on how you're gonna pay for it.

Don't always believe the "experts" on how much you can make. Some of them spent years building a customer base, and now have it easy because they have the name and customers search them out. Some make more money selling books on how to market garden than they make market gardening.

 

[jcraftenworth]

We don't want to get stuck inside the 2/4 wheel tractor box. We need to think OUTSIDE the box! Yes, that's right. ONE WHEEL TRACTOR!!:

 

[arrows]

We don't want to get stuck inside the 2/4 wheel tractor box. We need to think OUTSIDE the box! Yes, that's right. ONE WHEEL TRACTOR!!:

Haha! That reminds me of Brushy One String. Who needs 6 strings on their guitar?

 

[CADplans]

You can guess my vote on 2 or 4 wheel tractors,,, I have $1,500 total invested in all of the machines,

 

[jcraftenworth]

Hey those hoods look like they'd take a straw bale ok! Let's strap a bale to each and go for a hay ride! We'll need 3 riders and 3 drivers!

You can guess my vote on 2 or 4 wheel tractors,,, I have $1,500 total invested in all of the machines,

 

[CADplans]

Hey those hoods look like they'd take a straw bale ok! Let's strap a bale to each and go for a hay ride! We'll need 3 riders and 3 drivers!

That is OK with the two on the left,,,
the one on the right has a problem,, the flames would set the bale on fire!!

:laughing: