tony123
Platinum Member
toulomne, I don't know how I ever missed your thread? Beautiful tractor and home. Can you describe your property and plans for it a little better?
3520 arrived...first impressions.
- Thread starter tuolumne
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OP
tuolumne
Gold Member
Tony, I responded to some of your questions in your thread. Our property is 24 acres on an eastern slope of the Taconic foothills. This picture is looking east at the Green Mountains.
The property is roughly rectangular, around 600 feet x 1800 feet, and is slopes down from the road from 2% to 12%. There is a ravine at the rear that drops down to a creek with slopes around 45 degrees; hard to navigate on foot. If nothing else, our children have a great sled run! We plan to lay our fruit trees just beyond the snow pile in the forground between the driveway and the house. This is slope is around 8% which is navigable and fine for trees, but a garden would wash away. The slope faces southeast, which I understand to be good for fruit trees. We will plant varieties similar to those we left behind in CT, apples, pears, cherry, peaches and plums. We will be planting raspberries, blackberries and blueberries...somewhere, everywhere! The woods is already loaded with black caps. The existing trees are mostly Ash and Sugar Maple; this was pasture until the 1950's, so those Maples are ready to take their first tap. We intend to do a lot of sugaring (probably foreign to your area
) Other species include Basswood, birch, pine, fir, spruce, cherry, hickory and aspen. I am sure that someone who knows wood would find a lot of other varieties. I miss the oaks we had in CT (but not those leaves!). The forest is very healthy, and I will be taking out the Ash for firewood and leaving the Maples more room to grow. Our slopes lend themselves to sugaring with tubing, but we will start slow with buckets. Speaking of firewood (and to keep on the tractor topic) here is my wood boiler heading into the basement.
This thing weighs 2000 lbs, and I could only pick the forks about 12" off the ground.This is a wood gasification unit, and I will be using 1000 gallons of water as heat storage. I plan to load firewood into the basement in crates through the double doors, so as to limit the number of times I need to handle the wood. It will be split and chucked to the crates to season.
And here is the backup heat and cooking appliance since we anticipate many power outages out in the sticks. (Our neighbor, a lifetime resident, speaks of friends who live "down on the blacktop")
The garden area will be below the house, and this area is not yet cleared. There are about 2 acreas that are nearly flat, and well suited for tillage. The soil is unbelievable on this property and looks like it will grow about anything. I havn't sent any samples off to the lab yet. I don't know where we'll fence in the beasts yet. I don't have any neighbor issues, as the properties on both sides are similar size. There are a few trails on the property from the previous owners skidding out firewood, so access is good. I can go anywhere now that I have tire chains, but was helpless without them with the snow.
To update on the first impressions; I took the tractor between our homes for the second time to clean out the snow in Pawlet. It was just to deep this time for the shovel! Last time I had the backhoe on, and had to drop into third gear on some of the hills. This time I had on the rear blade, and made it up all the hills in 4th. That 1000 lbs makes a difference. I've done plenty of snow removal with the loader mounted blade. It works great, although I often need to get on the steering brakes to keep the edges of the drive pushed back. The chains turned this machine from nearly useless to unstopable. Our driveway got iced up pretty bad with the warm spells we had a few times. I am currently looking for a PTO sander, although I may get a reciever mount style and weld a reciever to the back blade. I like leaving that blade on because it can dig down through the ice when needed, and the snow plow tends to float on top. This tractor has been everything we hoped and more! Now I need to find a trailer like Tony's to take hayrides down to the lake for ice skating!
The property is roughly rectangular, around 600 feet x 1800 feet, and is slopes down from the road from 2% to 12%. There is a ravine at the rear that drops down to a creek with slopes around 45 degrees; hard to navigate on foot. If nothing else, our children have a great sled run! We plan to lay our fruit trees just beyond the snow pile in the forground between the driveway and the house. This is slope is around 8% which is navigable and fine for trees, but a garden would wash away. The slope faces southeast, which I understand to be good for fruit trees. We will plant varieties similar to those we left behind in CT, apples, pears, cherry, peaches and plums. We will be planting raspberries, blackberries and blueberries...somewhere, everywhere! The woods is already loaded with black caps. The existing trees are mostly Ash and Sugar Maple; this was pasture until the 1950's, so those Maples are ready to take their first tap. We intend to do a lot of sugaring (probably foreign to your area
) Other species include Basswood, birch, pine, fir, spruce, cherry, hickory and aspen. I am sure that someone who knows wood would find a lot of other varieties. I miss the oaks we had in CT (but not those leaves!). The forest is very healthy, and I will be taking out the Ash for firewood and leaving the Maples more room to grow. Our slopes lend themselves to sugaring with tubing, but we will start slow with buckets. Speaking of firewood (and to keep on the tractor topic) here is my wood boiler heading into the basement.This thing weighs 2000 lbs, and I could only pick the forks about 12" off the ground.This is a wood gasification unit, and I will be using 1000 gallons of water as heat storage. I plan to load firewood into the basement in crates through the double doors, so as to limit the number of times I need to handle the wood. It will be split and chucked to the crates to season.
And here is the backup heat and cooking appliance since we anticipate many power outages out in the sticks. (Our neighbor, a lifetime resident, speaks of friends who live "down on the blacktop")
The garden area will be below the house, and this area is not yet cleared. There are about 2 acreas that are nearly flat, and well suited for tillage. The soil is unbelievable on this property and looks like it will grow about anything. I havn't sent any samples off to the lab yet. I don't know where we'll fence in the beasts yet. I don't have any neighbor issues, as the properties on both sides are similar size. There are a few trails on the property from the previous owners skidding out firewood, so access is good. I can go anywhere now that I have tire chains, but was helpless without them with the snow.
To update on the first impressions; I took the tractor between our homes for the second time to clean out the snow in Pawlet. It was just to deep this time for the shovel! Last time I had the backhoe on, and had to drop into third gear on some of the hills. This time I had on the rear blade, and made it up all the hills in 4th. That 1000 lbs makes a difference. I've done plenty of snow removal with the loader mounted blade. It works great, although I often need to get on the steering brakes to keep the edges of the drive pushed back. The chains turned this machine from nearly useless to unstopable. Our driveway got iced up pretty bad with the warm spells we had a few times. I am currently looking for a PTO sander, although I may get a reciever mount style and weld a reciever to the back blade. I like leaving that blade on because it can dig down through the ice when needed, and the snow plow tends to float on top. This tractor has been everything we hoped and more! Now I need to find a trailer like Tony's to take hayrides down to the lake for ice skating!
OP
tuolumne
Gold Member
It was 20 below zero last night, and 10 below when I fired up the tractor this morning....no problems at all. Last time it got this cold my fuel was all geled up, and it took 911 and a heat gun to get her thawed out. Now I keep some Power Service something or other in the tank, and haven't had any issues. What is this tractor actually doing when it warms up? Does it have the headers open until it reaches a certain temp? I don't go anywhere until it goes back into a normal idle. On a morning like this the hydraulics are a bit sluggish until the fluid warms up. We ran a bit short on firewood for our hungry stove; here I'm loading some logs onto the trailer.
The grapple makes this so easy. I left everything at 12' when I cleared the lot, and this Ash burns really nice even when fresh split. These are the chains I got...very agressive with the ice studs. That steel is also extremely hard to cut...boron steel or something like that.
The chains come off in 30 seconds each, and putting them on is a back breaking 5 minutes each. I've only done it once so far. There is always snow to push around. Here is our driveway from up near the road. Plowing is still fun at this point.
The grapple makes this so easy. I left everything at 12' when I cleared the lot, and this Ash burns really nice even when fresh split. These are the chains I got...very agressive with the ice studs. That steel is also extremely hard to cut...boron steel or something like that.
The chains come off in 30 seconds each, and putting them on is a back breaking 5 minutes each. I've only done it once so far. There is always snow to push around. Here is our driveway from up near the road. Plowing is still fun at this point.
newt92
Gold Member
Tuolumne, awsome place, great pictures. Thanks for sharing and keep them coming!!
Dennis
Dennis
grainger12002
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2002
- Messages
- 806
- Location
- Pomfret,Connecticut
- Tractor
- yanmar 336d w ldr,Cub,many attachments
Tuolumne- Great place and lots ofgreatpics,very intersting to watch your progress, where did you move from ? Glad you are getting some well deserved seat time !!
OP
tuolumne
Gold Member
Ellington. I worked in Hartford as a structural engineer.
jenkinsph
Super Star Member
Congratulations on a nice new rig and toys, am very interested how it works in tight quarters.
Steve
Steve
putt_putt_green
Silver Member
I recently read that south facing slopes can be bad for fruit tree production. The reason being that the trees will start to bud out earlier in the spring (since they are getting more sun exposure). This makes them more likely to get hit by a frost, killing the buds. So my suggestion would be to plant them where they will be protected by the hardwoods in the early spring, but get full sun once the danger of a hard frost passes. Thats what I'm planning to do when I plant my orchard.
By the way, thats a lovely homestead you have there.
OP
tuolumne
Gold Member
I believe there is a picture further back in the post of the tractor grading out gravel in the basement. The turning radius on these machines is extremely tight, and using a steering brake you can spin around on one tire. This was also very useful when logging off our site, and the tight turning allowed me to maneuver the 12' logs through the woods very effectively.jenkinsph said: