This will be long, but you should get it all if you're getting ready buy a machine. I have a 2520 that I bought just a couple of months ago. We have put just under 100 hours on it. Our property is just under 100 acres. We also garden, but don't use the tractor for that work other than to move materials (mulch and manure) to the gardens. We do not use the 2520 for tilling of any sort.
Our machine has the FEL (48" bucket) and backhoe (Model 46) as well as a set of pallet forks by Artillian.
My son is building a house on part of this property and the machine has been a godsend to assist with that work. In the last two weeks he has placed over 100 tons of crushed stone, put in a 200' roadway to the site (which will become his driveway), and used it to both dig out a portion of the original excavation that the big machines missed and to clean up cave-ins of the pit wall in the heavy rains we've been having.
Our primary use of our machine is to handle firewood. We use the pallet forks for that work and they are the best investment in a tool that I have made for that sort of work. Those 20-foot pine logs will be child's play if you get a 2520, though if you have to move them around obstructions it could be tricky. We cut most of ours at 9 to 12 feet for just that reason; its not the weight, its the width of the load and our narrow logging roads that are the problem. When we cut firewood we set aside some logs if we have an intention of having it sawed in the future. My son has pulled out two cherry logs that he wants to have sawed. Both are well over 20 feet long, the longer of the two is 27 feet and 18" at the big end and the shorter log (this one is easy to remember, its 22 feet long and 22 inches in diameter). While the tractor's hydraulics lift the load I made it a point to only carry those logs over flat and relatively smooth ground - it was more weight than I wanted on the front axles.
Yesterday I took 5 logs out of the woods with our machine, four Elm and one Maple. Each of them was cut to 9' lengths. The Maple maxed out the machine's hydraulics at the forks (1,184 lbs.) and so I had to cut a foot and a half off it to pick it up and move it. I then had to haul it through some serious mud and up one very steep hill that required that I have the tractor in 4-wheel-drive as well as lock the rear axle to make it up.
The tractor is handling all of these tasks with ease. It has turned out to be a much better machine than I expected it to be. It has outstanding traction (backhoe on, rear tires (R4) liquid filled) and very useful hydraulics.
As for the backhoe, it is limited in both strength and depth but still a very useful tool. We have used to to dig drainage ditches and I dug some of the footer for the house in a part where we had to put in an unexpected retaining wall. I will also be using it to put in his septic system, though I may have to find a machine with greater depth capability to bury the tank. So basically the machine is handy and well suited to small jobs, but it does have limitations.
Ergonomically, the tractor is quite comfortable. All controls are easily at hand and intuitive to use. Filters, grease fittings, and fill ports are easily accessible and filters are easily found. The tractor gets very good fuel economy. Moving the stone gave us good evidence of that. While moving the stone we ran the tractor non stop full days, driving it up and down hill about 200 feet between the pile and the pit. We ran the machine at 1800~-2000 RPM and were using about 5~6 gallons of fuel per day. Just slightly less than a gallon per hour.
That's about all that comes to mind at the moment, got any specific questions about it?
