m7040 said:It is not about payback like for a commercial venture it is about comfort, satisfaction and fun.
Amen!
Bob
m7040 said:It is not about payback like for a commercial venture it is about comfort, satisfaction and fun.
m7040 said:it is about comfort, satisfaction and fun.
And on top of "time constraints" let toss good old mother nature into the mix...with unusally high rainfall..!MtnViewRanch said:.....
I think what a lot of people here on TBN forget is that a lot of us just don't have the time to get some of these projects done in a lackadaisical time frame. If we are lucky we might average 5-6 days a month to work on our property. We have a lot to do and not enough time to get it done in. Yes it could be done with a smaller tractor, heck, it might even be more fun with a smaller tractor. But it simply takes to much time to get some of this stuff done.
Glowplug said:Hopefully round bailing hay on approximately 2 acres with Vermeer Rebel bailer. This is mainly for hobby, and for the neighbors horses, not for profit.
Now I am happy with just tooling around with my itsy bitsy machine. Find it challenging to see what I can do with it.
Glowplug said:I think a lot of the earlier posts were obsessed with looking at the hp. If I would've said I was going to get the L5030 there would not have been so much hollering that I was buying too "big" of a tractor. So the L5030 is almost 50 hp. I would seriously consider the M5040 at about 47 hp. It has essentially exactly the same frame, dimensions, footprint as the M7040. The L5030 actually weighs 4090#, the M5040 weighs 3968#. What?!?!?! An M-series tractor weighs LESS than an L-series?!?! The M7040 weighs 4608#. A relatively light tractor for 68 hp. The size dimensions between the M5040 and the M7040 are all within 1 or 2 inches. The Mxx40s appear to actually be rather "compact" for their power. So they're really not that "big". They pale in comparison to comparable hp tractors such as New Holland and Mahindra. The only problem I have with the M5040 is that it doesn't have cast wheels or limited slip differential like the M7040. So it's not all about horsepower. I really feel that some of the guys look at the situation from the outside and see me as some young newbie whipper-snapper with visions of massive horsepower in his eyes, who's not really a farmer but a professional, buying a big tractor for his "estate" because it would be the cool thing to do. Let me tell you, that's just simply not the case.
I had a long drive today to some of my relatives in eastern Kentucky. I was on the road for over 2 hours. I started thinking that maybe they were right. Maybe I SHOULD seriously consider the L4330 or L4630 again. I thought about this for a long time.
I have looked at this situation from all different angles. When I try to think about this whole thing objectively from an outside point of view I think that anyone with 16 acres would be best served with something in the range of an L4330. I would think it would be overkill for that person to get an M-series. I even forget that I have "only" 16 acres since I am looking at the M7040. The M7040 seems like the right tractor but the fact that I'm talking about using it on 16 acres just isn't logical. But when I gaze out across my land and visualize a tractor on it things change. Me, on an L-series tractor on my land just doesn't seem right out there. It just seems unnatural and uncomfortable. It seems like a square peg forced into a round hole. On the other hand, when I visualize me on an Mxx40 series tractor on my land doing some chores it just seems right. It seems like it was meant to be. It is though me, my land, and the M7040 were made to go together. I know this may sound like a bunch of psycho-babble fluff. You may think that I've lost my mind and finally gone off the deep end. You can feel free to think that if you want. But I believe there's actually a lot more to buying a tractor than just looking at spec sheets, prices, planned tasks, and land size then matching someone up with a tractor based almost on a mathematical formula. A very large portion of tractor buying is feel and instinct. And for me, my gut feeling and instinct tells me to get the M7040.
john_bud said:"we can't get real close to good advice. Only guesses and speculation. While fun for us, it's probably frustrating for you."