The Suburban Farmer
Silver Member
OK, so I'm a little late to this "registration" thing... but I've been an active lurker on the site for far too long. Without a doubt, this has been the BEST site out on the interwebs for guys like me... great advice, nice people, and an incredibly broad spectrum of topics. So, I thought I'd "officially" join the community and start sharing my experiences. I doubt it will, but MAYBE some of my lessons and projects will be helpful for other folks that were like me not too long ago and trying to figure out just what to buy, and then how to use, a tractor.
I actually grew up in a farming family -- both my mom and dad were dirt-poor farmers when they were kids, but they grew up, went to school, and somehow managed to get off the farm, get professional careers and raise a family of kids an an upper-middle class lifestyle while still instilling the virtues of "good old southern rural living" in all of us. It's funny, in retrospect, but I remember playing with a brand new Atari (WAY before my friends ever talked their folks into buying one), going to a symphony concert in New York City, and spending 10 hour days brush-hogging fields on an old Ford tractor and rotating our grazing pastures all in the same summer week -- and that didn't seem the LEAST BIT strange to me. Now that I'm in my -- ahem -- "early forties", I realize just how unique and special my lifestyle growing up really was.
SO... once we had kids of our own, my beautiful wife (Mrs. Suburban Farmer) and I realized that city, then suburban, living just wasn't cutting it for our family. Our kids didn't know the difference between a middle-buster and a backhoe and they thought that ANYTHING you could need could be bought at the mall or the local Costco, and both my wife and I wanted to ensure that they grew up knowing what life was like outside of the cookie-cutter McMansion-land we used to call home. So, 3 years ago, we moved to a 6 acre lot that backs up to a big regional wildlife preserve (no unruly neighbors building on 3 sides and blocking our view!) and started living the dual lifestyle of "professionals during the week and mini-farmers on the weekend."
OK, maybe "mini-farmer" is stretching it a bit -- we garden and raise our own chickens... and the county DOES limit what we can do on our land, so I guess that really only counts as "farmers in spirit." We also are pretty darn handy, and believe that anything worth doing is worth doing/building yourself, and we are trying to instill that same love of basic self-sufficiency in our kids -- with admittedly, mixed results thus far... I'm not sure either one of our boys could survive the Zombie Apocalypse, but at least they're learning how to drive a tractor, cut firewood, care for the chickens, and enjoy shooting a pellet gun once in a while. At least it's a start.
Any way... a big THANK YOU to all of you that are part of this community. I hope I can give back just a small portion of the value I've received over the last few years. Never realized just HOW critical a good-quality tractor is when you're caring for 6 acres... "handy as a pocket in a shirt" as my dad used to say. I've used my Deere 2320 for everything from leveling the back yard to plowing the (very long) driveway, to moving a shed, to using the FEL as a somewhat-unsafe-but-very-handy platform for clearing out the gutters and limbing trees.
How does ANYONE manage to live without a tractor?
JD
I actually grew up in a farming family -- both my mom and dad were dirt-poor farmers when they were kids, but they grew up, went to school, and somehow managed to get off the farm, get professional careers and raise a family of kids an an upper-middle class lifestyle while still instilling the virtues of "good old southern rural living" in all of us. It's funny, in retrospect, but I remember playing with a brand new Atari (WAY before my friends ever talked their folks into buying one), going to a symphony concert in New York City, and spending 10 hour days brush-hogging fields on an old Ford tractor and rotating our grazing pastures all in the same summer week -- and that didn't seem the LEAST BIT strange to me. Now that I'm in my -- ahem -- "early forties", I realize just how unique and special my lifestyle growing up really was.
SO... once we had kids of our own, my beautiful wife (Mrs. Suburban Farmer) and I realized that city, then suburban, living just wasn't cutting it for our family. Our kids didn't know the difference between a middle-buster and a backhoe and they thought that ANYTHING you could need could be bought at the mall or the local Costco, and both my wife and I wanted to ensure that they grew up knowing what life was like outside of the cookie-cutter McMansion-land we used to call home. So, 3 years ago, we moved to a 6 acre lot that backs up to a big regional wildlife preserve (no unruly neighbors building on 3 sides and blocking our view!) and started living the dual lifestyle of "professionals during the week and mini-farmers on the weekend."
OK, maybe "mini-farmer" is stretching it a bit -- we garden and raise our own chickens... and the county DOES limit what we can do on our land, so I guess that really only counts as "farmers in spirit." We also are pretty darn handy, and believe that anything worth doing is worth doing/building yourself, and we are trying to instill that same love of basic self-sufficiency in our kids -- with admittedly, mixed results thus far... I'm not sure either one of our boys could survive the Zombie Apocalypse, but at least they're learning how to drive a tractor, cut firewood, care for the chickens, and enjoy shooting a pellet gun once in a while. At least it's a start.
Any way... a big THANK YOU to all of you that are part of this community. I hope I can give back just a small portion of the value I've received over the last few years. Never realized just HOW critical a good-quality tractor is when you're caring for 6 acres... "handy as a pocket in a shirt" as my dad used to say. I've used my Deere 2320 for everything from leveling the back yard to plowing the (very long) driveway, to moving a shed, to using the FEL as a somewhat-unsafe-but-very-handy platform for clearing out the gutters and limbing trees.
How does ANYONE manage to live without a tractor?
JD
