10 acres no tractor (yet)

[arioda]

Hi, the wife & I just bought 10 acres that was clear-cut 2 years ago. We have ~1000 little doug-fir trees that were planted on 15' centers and stumps that will stay. We are managing this as a forest (to be again). We will be building a house and keeping a little house and barn already there. Across the middle of the property is a gentle 30' high slope <10% grade that I plan to "cut" a driveway up at a shallow diagonal (we occasionally get snow in western WA). The ground is lumpy-bumpy as the previous owner could not wait for summer to cut down the trees. We will be locally smoothing, brush mowing and road building. I have an honest importer near here of Japanese tractors 80's vintage and am thinking of something like a 1700D yanmar (~20hp) with loader, box, mower, blade attachments. Was thinking of 2wd to save $$ but see posts that make me think 4wd is the only way to go given the grading work. We'd really appreciate any suggestions on size/type/configuration machine(s) we should get given what we are doing.

thanks a lot,

Dale & Paulette

 

[beenthere]

:welcome:
Go 4wd for sure. And... you don't say what you are willing to spend, but
Search for a good parts supply house and hope you are a good mechanic if you stick to getting an old gray market import.
Otherwise, buy equivalent to a Deere and expect you can get parts easily and have something of value if (when) you decide you need to trade up to something bigger.

 

[MarkV]

Hi Dale and Paulette, welcome to the forum and congratulations on the new land. My best advice is to keep reading on the forum, there is a wealth of information in the archives available by searching. Given that we all have an opinion I will throw mine out. Used import tractors can be a great deal for many. They do often require someone who has good mechanical skills and tools to work on them. For some replacement parts have been hard to find but we do have some members here that are dealers and offer good mail order part service. If that fits your bill it may be for you.

Personally I think a 20 hp tractor is too small for what you want to do. That size tractor will be marginal with a 4 foot bush hog and marginal for grading. Both grading and your slopes would call for 4wd at the very least in my opinion.

As I said, just my opinion and your milage may very. Keep reading and ask some questions in the Yammar forum. They will know what you are looking at and can give some good advice.

MarkV

 

[arioda]

Thanks folks.. I will poke around a lot on this site / threads. I am very handy mechanically (actually a mechanical engineer). That said, I take my car to Jiffy Lube these days (and watch them like a hawk). I have LOTS of projects with this property and would not like to make restoring a tractor one of them, but still hope to find a good used (gray?) tractor that needs minimal maintenance. We'd like to spend well under $10K but also want to be happy with what we get. Over $9k and the wallet says, rent something It may be a tradeoff between nimble-useful and powerful-enough-useful. Maybe I could hire a dozer for the driveway and stay on the nimble-useful side.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Welcome to tractorbynet.

I agree a little heavier tractor. Something like a 135 MF or 800 series Ford size wise would be stable but you will have to buy newer to get 4WD.

Getting a dozer in there to get your drive and building sights prepped ASAP would be nice.