Hello Bildo, we've got a similar amount of rough land. Lots of rocks and trees and things to do before building a homestead. I used a 3 point hoe and Ag loader on a big JD farm tractor for years. It worked, but other than for roads & ditching, that type of combo it wasn't as useful as I had hoped....and was sometimes a bit dangerous. Then - at my wife's insistance - we got an
M59 with a thumb. What a huge world of difference! All HST and fingertip controls. Powerful. No more dangerous 3pt hoe ops. We kept the old JD for it's cat II 3 pt ability, but now with the
M59 we could do all kinds of construction work like stacking big boulders for a rock wall, move logs and anything heavy, plant trees, dig a well, and instead of narrow shallow ditches we could dig a real stream channel quickly enough to just do it instead of wondering if it was possible. On the other end, the loader bucket carries a huge load and will lift almost two tons! It's now 8 years later and we would buy the same machine over again....absolutely.
BTW, a couple of years back we had a 500 year flood followed by a brutal winter. That led to a unique opportunity to add a full size JD310SG TLB - WITH A CAB! to our fleet and so we did. This full size TLB has even more strength and speed than the
M59 of course, but to my surprise it only sees about 10% of the use unless it's snowing outside (that heated cab). The reason is that even though the JD310 is a bigger beast, the
M59 is a big enough machine for most any kind of serious TLB work - and the
M59 is just a little more handy, accurate, and convenient to use.
Ten years later, a lot of the rough construction is done and we are a bit older. The
M59 is still handy for moving heavy things and for maintaining the property. It's more than paid for itself and still worth most of what it cost - including machine maintenance. Retrospectively it was a good purchase and surprisingly after all these years it is still a fairly decent investment. But we've gotten older too, and saving wear on our older bodies is increasingly important - so if lifting, placing, and smoothing is a lot of what the
M59 does from here on out then that's just fine. We'd keep it for that alone.
And if you can't make the TLB happen, at least know that any kind of tractor sure does help get the work done. Some machines are better, but all are good. Farm style 4wd tractors with add-on Loaders and their 3 pt. Backhoes do have unique dangers and downsides, but again...the truth is that all it takes is common sense for both to be very useful. (must disconnect the draft control !!)
If that's what the budget dictates then that's wonderful too. What I'm trying to say is that there are machines specifically built and balanced for construction - and Kubota's TLB line is very, very good. Worth the price if you can spring for it. All over TBN, we constantly see people writing good things about the whole line.
Be well,
rScotty
