First home. Time for my first tractor.

[WVH1977]

An 18,000 lb mini excavator for one week including fuel and delivery is around $ 2,500. It is the biggest size you can get in a mini-ex and will clear out an acre in a week easily if you know how to operate it. I cleared an acre behind my house with 18" dia. plus trees and buried and old dump pile. The machine knocked them down like they were twigs and pulled up the stumps with ease. It had a hydraulic thumb and I dug and picked all the stumps, dug a hole, put the stumps in and burned them. I used the dozer blade to rough grade the ground after all the destruction. Best vacation ever!



Once the heavy work is done, go get your compact tractor with backhoe for your job and maintenance work around your new place.

 

[jeff9366]

I want to be able to use the tractor backhoe to repair water lines in areas to tight for the system's full size backhoe. This is important for two reasons... The tractor needs to be capable of good quality light backhoe work.

Can you obtain permission to take the full size Backhoe home for an occasional weekend? Do you have the truck and trailer to do so?

 

[Wellarmedlamb]

Actually I could get it for considerably longer than the weekend. It would cost a few hundred bucks transport each way. No truck or trailer. My general plan had been just that. Use the old 580C for the big work and get a reasonably sized tractor for general use and small jobs here and there.

 

[airbiscuit]

Actually I could get it for considerably longer than the weekend. It would cost a few hundred bucks transport each way. No truck or trailer. My general plan had been just that. Use the old 580C for the big work and get a reasonably sized tractor for general use and small jobs here and there.

That's good to hear. You can take stumps out with a Compact tractor, and you can break a compact tractor with stumps, and there is a good chance you will do both.

 

[airbiscuit]

I don't think you can put a backhoe on the John Deere 3032e because of the aluminum rear end housing.

You will want a tractor that is large enough to be comfortable to operate.

That said, something like this would be big enough for your property and intended needs (except stumping) and easy to trailer, if you fit comfortably on it.

 

[Wellarmedlamb]

The 3032e is often packaged with a woods groundbreaker, 3 point, PTO backhoe.

 

[airbiscuit]

 

[pinetree10]

Maybe you could rent some heavier machines to get the bulk of the heavy work out of the way first and then finish off with your own equipment. I've found that my own JD 2720 with its bucket and PTO chipper is great for regular maintenance and smaller scale work. However, when it comes to large volume jobs I'd rather rent a commercial machine to get the bulk of the work done and then finish off with my own equipment.

I have 2.5 acres of mature trees and the chipper and loader have been great for steady maintenance over the years. I've had quite a few trees taken down over the years and managed them as they came, but we had a major wind event in March that forced me to take down 40+ pine trees all at once, all of which were well over 80 feet tall. I hired a guy with a mini excavator and a skid steer to take all of the trees down and off my property because all that weight and abuse would have put way too much wear and tear on my tractor for my taste. The logs were huge, often several feet across, and far too heavy for what I own. I had him leave the branches so I could chip them and use the wood chips to cover the forest floor, keep the weeds down, and make it look nice when it was done, but I'm not using my chipper for that job. I'm going to rent a commercial self-feeding chipper once he's done and spend a day or two grinding up hundreds of pine branches of varying sizes because I don't want to put my tractor and chipper through what I think is a bigger job than I want them to do.

After watching the guy use his mini excavator I'm convinced that those things were a fantastic invention. It's incredible what that little thing can do for its size. Good luck and post some photos of your progress.

You listed the 3033r so I figured I'd attach a photo. I'd love to hear from anyone who has this setup. It has to be fun to operate.

 

[Wellarmedlamb]

Pinetree, thanks for the first hand examples of what you do and don't want to attempt with your tractor. The 3033r is nice but bigger than I need if the big work is knocked out ahead. I really want the new redesigned, built in Georgia 2032r or 2038r but the price is painful. I'm waiting to see if JD follows through and works over the 2025r at the end of the summer. Might be perfect.

On a separate note, so far I best like the John Deere and Mahindra products. I don't fit well on the Kabota stuff. The New Holland tractors don't seem as nice for the price and my Kioti dealer has next to no inventory which means I haven't actually looked at a Kioti.

 

[airbiscuit]

Mahindra isn't in quite the same league as Deere and Kubota as far as quality and sophistication.