vrenifossi
New member
Hi everybody,
I am new here and since my situation and questions are somewhat different from those in other threads I thought it might be better to open a new thread.
My wife and I moved from Germany to Chile some 15 years ago where we have two kids now. Over the years we bought three lots/plots in the south of Chile. The first is a 6 acre lot close to the city where we work and on which we built a house in which we live now. Half of that is tractorable, the rest is buildings, orchard, vegetable garden, green house, lawn and pond. On the tractorable half we have two horses and a stable. The second plot is a flat 13 acres light forest along a river and the third is a 45 acre, pretty hilly land at the coast of which an estimated 35 acres are dense and partially steep forest, 5 acres are open area (I would not call it grassland right now) and 5 acres are high brush (mainly goarse). Land and horses are extremely cheap in southern Chile and before we came here I would have never dreamed that I could ever own that much land...
Since I work like a free-lance I would love to dedicate half of my time to the properties, turning them into something and build some cabins that we could use ourselves and perhaps eventually rent out to sports fishers.
The first tasks would be building access ways to and on the properties, which would involve removal of brush, removal of some smaller trees and removing a few older stumps, scraping a track and building a little bridge over a small creek. On the coast property, this will need to be done also on slopes. Since on the river plot in very rainy winters the river may flood parts of the property for 1- max. 2 feet I would like to dig a decently sized trout pond and use the material for creating a 3 foot elevated level around the pond on which later a cabin could be placed. When that is done there will be fencing, cabin building, work in the woods for fire wood, removing goarse, creating decent meadows for the horses and making hay.
Since the plots are up to a day-trip apart from each other mobility is an important factor. I have a 2500 Silverado with a 2 ton dump trailer on which I could move around a tractor, but of course for easy handling and for budget reasons I want to keep everything as small and light as possible (the more I spend on machinery the longer we need to wait until we can afford the cabins...). On the other hand I want to accomplish something while working on the plots and I do not want to overstress the machines.
So where would be the sweet spot? There is no neighbors with machines I could ask, on the country side people either have cattle or sheep or do forestry work with oxes. Since Kubota and John Deere are both very present in Chile I would go with either of these brands with a slight preference for Kubota because of the universal quick attach ability on the FEL. But which size and model? I was thinking about a Kubota B2650 with FEL, bucket, grapple attachment and pallet forks for the FEL, BH77 backhoe with thumb (or better a Woods with hydraulic thumb?), a rear box blade and a post hole digger. Later I could add a skidding winch, a disk plow and a sickle bar mower. I was thinking that the skidding winch might already be handy earlier for removing stumps, small trees and goarse.
Since I will probably import the machine and accessories it might make sense to get as much as possible in a package to safe shipping and handling costs, but I have to see how far I get with the budget. But would a B2650 be up to the jobs at all? How does this machine behave on slopes? What would be a better choice without blowing my budget and/or losing mobility? Does anyone have similar conditions and tasks and/or could share some helpful experience?
Cheers,
Fossi
I am new here and since my situation and questions are somewhat different from those in other threads I thought it might be better to open a new thread.
My wife and I moved from Germany to Chile some 15 years ago where we have two kids now. Over the years we bought three lots/plots in the south of Chile. The first is a 6 acre lot close to the city where we work and on which we built a house in which we live now. Half of that is tractorable, the rest is buildings, orchard, vegetable garden, green house, lawn and pond. On the tractorable half we have two horses and a stable. The second plot is a flat 13 acres light forest along a river and the third is a 45 acre, pretty hilly land at the coast of which an estimated 35 acres are dense and partially steep forest, 5 acres are open area (I would not call it grassland right now) and 5 acres are high brush (mainly goarse). Land and horses are extremely cheap in southern Chile and before we came here I would have never dreamed that I could ever own that much land...
Since I work like a free-lance I would love to dedicate half of my time to the properties, turning them into something and build some cabins that we could use ourselves and perhaps eventually rent out to sports fishers.
The first tasks would be building access ways to and on the properties, which would involve removal of brush, removal of some smaller trees and removing a few older stumps, scraping a track and building a little bridge over a small creek. On the coast property, this will need to be done also on slopes. Since on the river plot in very rainy winters the river may flood parts of the property for 1- max. 2 feet I would like to dig a decently sized trout pond and use the material for creating a 3 foot elevated level around the pond on which later a cabin could be placed. When that is done there will be fencing, cabin building, work in the woods for fire wood, removing goarse, creating decent meadows for the horses and making hay.
Since the plots are up to a day-trip apart from each other mobility is an important factor. I have a 2500 Silverado with a 2 ton dump trailer on which I could move around a tractor, but of course for easy handling and for budget reasons I want to keep everything as small and light as possible (the more I spend on machinery the longer we need to wait until we can afford the cabins...). On the other hand I want to accomplish something while working on the plots and I do not want to overstress the machines.
So where would be the sweet spot? There is no neighbors with machines I could ask, on the country side people either have cattle or sheep or do forestry work with oxes. Since Kubota and John Deere are both very present in Chile I would go with either of these brands with a slight preference for Kubota because of the universal quick attach ability on the FEL. But which size and model? I was thinking about a Kubota B2650 with FEL, bucket, grapple attachment and pallet forks for the FEL, BH77 backhoe with thumb (or better a Woods with hydraulic thumb?), a rear box blade and a post hole digger. Later I could add a skidding winch, a disk plow and a sickle bar mower. I was thinking that the skidding winch might already be handy earlier for removing stumps, small trees and goarse.
Since I will probably import the machine and accessories it might make sense to get as much as possible in a package to safe shipping and handling costs, but I have to see how far I get with the budget. But would a B2650 be up to the jobs at all? How does this machine behave on slopes? What would be a better choice without blowing my budget and/or losing mobility? Does anyone have similar conditions and tasks and/or could share some helpful experience?
Cheers,
Fossi
