Nathan_OR
Bronze Member
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2003
- Messages
- 62
Hi everyone, thanks up front for any help you can offer.
My wife and I have finally paid off our truck, and are ready to get the tractor we've been needing for 5+ years. We have a 4 acre llama ranch, all flat, on a very gentle grade. About 1/2 acre is in lawn, another 1/2 acre in fruit orchard. It's Oregon (that's OR-ee-gun, folks) so the ground does get muddy, but I don't want to ruin the grass in the winter (I'm planning on R4 tires).
There are three main things I do every week:
- muck the stalls out and spread new sand (I do this now by hand)
- mow the ~1/2 acre lawn around the house and orchard (I do this now with a small White riding mower)
- knock down the tall grass/weeds in the ~3 acres of pasture, so they don't seed my neighbors hay fields (I do this now with a line trimmer)
But there are also several other things I want to do with the tractor:
- pull old fence posts and dig new postholes
- landscape our back yard, including pretty major earth moving
- pull around the truck's utility trailer to gather up pruning cuttings and deadfall, firewood, that kind of thing
- ideally I could also rig a hitch to move around our ~3000 lb gooseneck hitch llama trailer... don't know if this is possible
- transplant some trees
Okay so I know this is a lot of stuff to do. What I need to start with are suggestions about how big a tractor to get, and what attachments I should own. I know that to do my main jobs I need:
- loader
- brush hog
- mower (although I'm thinking that due to the orchard trees being low I might just stick with the riding mower for the mowing duty)
I also know that to get the other jobs done I would need:
- post hole digger
- box cutter
- backhoe
Alright so my monthly payment max is about $500. If I can get interest free financing for 36 months then I can afford about $18k. I could probably come up with $2k down for about $20k total.
I know the backhoe is really expensive and maybe I'd be better off renting for that work. But I have to work in small blocks of time so renting can be hard, since you really want to line it all up in one day. Anyway I don't want to tell you guys what I should get because really I'm new to this whole deal of CUTs. I've run my uncle's tractor on his almond farm quite a bit and my grandpa's on his walnut farm so I know that you always want that extra bit of power when you're trying to get work done.
So I've looked at the JD and Kubota selection tools and the are no good. They don't let me say I want to primarily load and mow, but also want to be able to run a real backhoe and pull around a 3k lb. trailer. Also I'm not sure what the deal is with the different lines... JD 2305 vs. 2520 vs. 4210 vs. etc etc and all the Kubota lines. Don't even know how big these guys are... I don't want such a big tractor that I can't get around my orchard with it.
I guess I want the smallest most powerful tractor that is still built to do real work. I'll be pulling stumps, trying to dig up boulders with my loader, and all that... you know, hicks beat up tractors and all that
Anyway any tips on where to start, how to narrow my search down, that would be really great. If you think you know just the tractor I should get that's even better.
Again thanks, I know these kind of questions are hard to answer since there are so many factors you don't know. I just want to avoid making a big mistake spending all this money because I didn't know about some big difference between one tractor and the next.
Thanks,
Nathan
My wife and I have finally paid off our truck, and are ready to get the tractor we've been needing for 5+ years. We have a 4 acre llama ranch, all flat, on a very gentle grade. About 1/2 acre is in lawn, another 1/2 acre in fruit orchard. It's Oregon (that's OR-ee-gun, folks) so the ground does get muddy, but I don't want to ruin the grass in the winter (I'm planning on R4 tires).
There are three main things I do every week:
- muck the stalls out and spread new sand (I do this now by hand)
- mow the ~1/2 acre lawn around the house and orchard (I do this now with a small White riding mower)
- knock down the tall grass/weeds in the ~3 acres of pasture, so they don't seed my neighbors hay fields (I do this now with a line trimmer)
But there are also several other things I want to do with the tractor:
- pull old fence posts and dig new postholes
- landscape our back yard, including pretty major earth moving
- pull around the truck's utility trailer to gather up pruning cuttings and deadfall, firewood, that kind of thing
- ideally I could also rig a hitch to move around our ~3000 lb gooseneck hitch llama trailer... don't know if this is possible
- transplant some trees
Okay so I know this is a lot of stuff to do. What I need to start with are suggestions about how big a tractor to get, and what attachments I should own. I know that to do my main jobs I need:
- loader
- brush hog
- mower (although I'm thinking that due to the orchard trees being low I might just stick with the riding mower for the mowing duty)
I also know that to get the other jobs done I would need:
- post hole digger
- box cutter
- backhoe
Alright so my monthly payment max is about $500. If I can get interest free financing for 36 months then I can afford about $18k. I could probably come up with $2k down for about $20k total.
I know the backhoe is really expensive and maybe I'd be better off renting for that work. But I have to work in small blocks of time so renting can be hard, since you really want to line it all up in one day. Anyway I don't want to tell you guys what I should get because really I'm new to this whole deal of CUTs. I've run my uncle's tractor on his almond farm quite a bit and my grandpa's on his walnut farm so I know that you always want that extra bit of power when you're trying to get work done.
So I've looked at the JD and Kubota selection tools and the are no good. They don't let me say I want to primarily load and mow, but also want to be able to run a real backhoe and pull around a 3k lb. trailer. Also I'm not sure what the deal is with the different lines... JD 2305 vs. 2520 vs. 4210 vs. etc etc and all the Kubota lines. Don't even know how big these guys are... I don't want such a big tractor that I can't get around my orchard with it.
I guess I want the smallest most powerful tractor that is still built to do real work. I'll be pulling stumps, trying to dig up boulders with my loader, and all that... you know, hicks beat up tractors and all that
Anyway any tips on where to start, how to narrow my search down, that would be really great. If you think you know just the tractor I should get that's even better.
Again thanks, I know these kind of questions are hard to answer since there are so many factors you don't know. I just want to avoid making a big mistake spending all this money because I didn't know about some big difference between one tractor and the next.
Thanks,
Nathan