Thanks for all the welcomes, it's good to be here at long last. I've been lurking on this forum for two years, but now it's time to finally join in the fun.
Yes, the hoe controls are outside the cab, but I don't have to do anything in the cab except set the throttle. Everything else takes place on the jump-seat of the hoe. I was told that you almost never see a cab tractor with a backhoe on it, but I needed a hoe bad on account of I have a lot of trees and stumps to dig up. The real fun will come when it's time to take the hoe off and put the shredder on. Not even the guy who delivered it had ever removed a hoe before.
Provided we don't get our weekly blizzard again this coming weekend, I hope to move some brush and tear out a tree or two. I'll be sure to grab some pics and post them. Honestly, it was looking at all the pics on here that finally made me realize I really needed to get a tractor if I was ever going to complete all my clean-up projects in this lifetime.