nova3930
Gold Member
Hello all, new member here in need of help defining requirements so I can start the shopping process.
Little background, I'm an engineer by training and have a decent background with machinery and equipment but not tractors and their use. Grew up a country boy and my grandfather was a dairy farmer so I'm not totally ignorant, just mostly so lol.
My wife and I have 16 acres that we're currently building a house on that I will need to keep up once we move in. Ground is basically flat. West property line is 1100 ft and change long and according to USGS has about 30ft of drop from North to South. Ground is very dry. I've seen it rain for a solid week and only about the top half inch is soggy, everything underneath is rock hard. Got probably about 12 inches of good topsoil followed by clay chert underneath. Ground has been farmed in some capacity or another since about 1848, most recently it's been leased for row cropping, currently with wheat.
Will have a small lawn area around the house of about 1 acre that I'll likely buy a regular residential mower for.
About 4 acres between the house and road will be in between pasture and lawn, kept short but not lawn quality, with a small fruit orchard on part of it. I'm thinking a finish mower would be useful here.
Rear eleven acres will be pasture, needing to be cut with a bushog. Thinking I may eventually run some goats and cattle in a mini-farm setup. Probably require some spraying of fence rows and such as well.
Wife has said she'd like to have a garden at some point too.
Now I have a Mustang skid steer loader, with bucket, forks, hydraulic auger and concrete bucket that my grandfather gave me before he passed away. With that setup I'm pretty sure I don't need a front end loader on the tractor.
So most of my use is cutter, finish mower, tiller and maybe a disc.
Given the above can I get some guidance on the following so I can start narrowing down by brands and models:
What HP range?
2WD or 4WD?
Depending on the answers to the above I might drift towards finding a good used tractor. Right now I'm not looking for any advice on models or brands, just what requirements the tractor must meet. Thanks in advance for any help.
Little background, I'm an engineer by training and have a decent background with machinery and equipment but not tractors and their use. Grew up a country boy and my grandfather was a dairy farmer so I'm not totally ignorant, just mostly so lol.
My wife and I have 16 acres that we're currently building a house on that I will need to keep up once we move in. Ground is basically flat. West property line is 1100 ft and change long and according to USGS has about 30ft of drop from North to South. Ground is very dry. I've seen it rain for a solid week and only about the top half inch is soggy, everything underneath is rock hard. Got probably about 12 inches of good topsoil followed by clay chert underneath. Ground has been farmed in some capacity or another since about 1848, most recently it's been leased for row cropping, currently with wheat.
Will have a small lawn area around the house of about 1 acre that I'll likely buy a regular residential mower for.
About 4 acres between the house and road will be in between pasture and lawn, kept short but not lawn quality, with a small fruit orchard on part of it. I'm thinking a finish mower would be useful here.
Rear eleven acres will be pasture, needing to be cut with a bushog. Thinking I may eventually run some goats and cattle in a mini-farm setup. Probably require some spraying of fence rows and such as well.
Wife has said she'd like to have a garden at some point too.
Now I have a Mustang skid steer loader, with bucket, forks, hydraulic auger and concrete bucket that my grandfather gave me before he passed away. With that setup I'm pretty sure I don't need a front end loader on the tractor.
So most of my use is cutter, finish mower, tiller and maybe a disc.
Given the above can I get some guidance on the following so I can start narrowing down by brands and models:
What HP range?
2WD or 4WD?
Depending on the answers to the above I might drift towards finding a good used tractor. Right now I'm not looking for any advice on models or brands, just what requirements the tractor must meet. Thanks in advance for any help.
