Business or Pleasure

[Henro]

I use mine strictly for "pleasure."

Sometimes I work it a lot, and the pleasure turns into real work, but I still get pleasure out of the results...

I get less pleasure from my wife giving me the business about how much fun I have on my tractor! Somehow the word tractor is not part of her commonly used vocabulary...but toy sure seems to be...

I work and she sees it as play! I use my favoite 4-wheeled tool, and all she sees is me on my toy! Life can be tough sometimes...but somebody gotta do it, right! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

(Just joking honey...kinda... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

 

[Glenn9643]

Mac,
This is a little off topic, but since you don't accept PM's I'll try this route.
What kind of fruit trees do you have? How do you control weeds around them?
Our soil here is pretty "heavy" and I've got about a dozen apples, peaches, and plums set out on hills about 12" higher than the surrounding ground and 12' in diameter. I also mulched with pinestraw but still have weeds and can't get near them with the mower due to the "hill". Would roundup be OK if kept off the trees?

 

[ikline]

Pleasure, Pleasure, and more Pleasure. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[RobertN]

All of the above. I got it to mow and maintain drive at my house/5-acres. Also gets used at my Dad's house/8-acres. It has seen use on our jobs, although many houses have really limited back yard access, which my 5' box scraper will not clear. Even my 4-1/2' wheel space on the back makes access challenging. I bought it originally for home use, else I may have got a narrower steup.

 

[cowboydoc]

Every tractor and implement I own is all business for farming and ranching.

 

[cowboydoc]

Soundguy you might want to set it up as a farm. If you do that, at least in Iowa and Idaho, you are also covered for any custom work you do. This saves you from paying contractor rates which are usually 4-10 times the cost of farm insurance.

 

[RMEADOWS]

I use mine for business. I have a small boarding stable and run a few head of cattle as well. I use mine for mostly bush hoggin and clearing the woods. I also use it to scrape out my round pens.

 

[MMM]

Glenn, roundup is fine, if applied on still day. Make sure none of the weeds are root suckers that can occur when raised beds erode and expose roots. They would absorb herbicide and stunt growth. I'm not sure if any erosion is taking place under you straw, as I don't use raised bed here in the loam hills, nor mulch. According to ag man, grass is more N dependent, where most fruit trees crave P and K and less N. They seem to coexist nicely, so I just mow to keep weeds at bay. Most trouble is with honeysuckle and wild grape vine next to trunks that will take a tree over. I pull those off tree and lay on ground then spray them to kill root.
I neglected saying in previous post that I grow Mayhaws so I wouldn't have to give a dissertation on what that is. Being from LA, I won't have to explain that to you. Sorry about pms also, but I tire of wading thru spam and am leary of posting adress anywhere.

 

[Glenn9643]

Thanks for the advise. I've never seen any mahaw's in hilly places. In MS, always around creek bottoms and here in low areas too. Didn't know they would do well in the hills. I do believe they make the best jelly in the world. Is there a harvesting machine to shake the berries off similar to what's used for blueberries or do you have to harvest by hand?
As for the PM's, I believe one has to be registered here to use that feature, and I've never received any sort of "spam" from having it. If you didn't elect to receive email notification of a PM the email address wouldn't enter into it...
Good luck with your mahaw enterprise.

 

[Soundguy]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Soundguy you might want to set it up as a farm. If you do that, at least in Iowa and Idaho, you are also covered for any custom work you do. This saves you from paying contractor rates which are usually 4-10 times the cost of farm insurance. )</font>

Down here in florida, they make it a tad hard on the small farmer,.. lots of hoops to jump thru.. Unless you are a big horse farm doing a couple hundred thou a year and huge acerages.. it is almost not worth it. The small farmer is lucky if he can even get ag exemption on his land. And farm insurance is almost even up with comercail rates.

About the only break we get is feedstuff is tax free if you buy at the coop, and ag tax on equipment is 2.5%, if your dealer will sell it to you like that... a few of the big equipment houses sell at full tax rate.

Soundguy