New landowner looking for advise

[s219]

Nice looking piece of land! I am in a similar situation -- we bought a 4 acre parcel, heavily wooded with a creek and frontage on a river. I wanted a small 4WD tractor to do preliminary site work and cut firewood before we built, then do projects and landscaping after the house is built. I bought a Kubota B2920 in December, mainly because it was a good size for narrow trails in the woods, has good ground clearance, and it gave me a bit more PTO horsepower for running a wood chipper (eventually bought a Wallenstein BX-42 chipper). So far it's been a great tractor, and I have done a lot of work with it, including digging and installing a driveway entrance and culvert. I got it up to 50 hours pretty quick, but it's been much more relaxed lately since the weather got warm and I am not doing as much work. I'll pick back up in the fall.

I did not buy a backhoe, mainly because of upfront cost. So far I haven't needed one, though it would have saved me a little shoveling here and there. I would consider buying one in the future when we actually live at the property and I have more uses and a place to store it.

I did get a box blade, and that has been put to a lot of uses already.

As far as land clearing, I wouldn't want to tackle large portions of it myself unless I had much larger equipment and a place to dispose of the debris (or hauling capability). So I personally wouldn't buy a small tractor with backhoe for that reason. We're seeing quotes of $5000-8000 to clear/grade/gravel a 600 foot driveway as well as clear the building site and septic area and install silt fencing (required by code). The guys will be in and out in 3-4 days, and haul off all the debris. That seems hard to compete with at the pace I'd operate at....

Don't forget to plan out how you'd store or transport the tractor if you are living offsite. I ended up buying a 7x16 trailer to haul the tractor around, and it's also been useful for hauling materials in (pipe, gravel, etc).

Good luck!

 

[bhh]

Hey guys, I really appreciate all the feedback and there is a lot of good info here to think about. Thank you. Someone mentioned a grapple and that looks like a very useful accessory for the type of work I will be doing.

Seems like the consensus is to skip the backhoe for now and that makes some sense I guess. When it comes time to clear, I can re-asses the backhoe and I will want to take a year or two to really get to know the land well before starting that anyway. The thought behind that was that I could probably get most of my money back out of it selling a year or two later if I bought a good condition used one and kept it that way. We'll see but focusing more on a tractor for general maintenance now I think is the right plan.

BTW, we will be living on the property in the existing old house for now and there is a 20x40 barn there already so storage won't be a problem.

 

[Martian]

Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, what is your budget?

You obviously have a lot of tasks planned for the tractor, and let me tell you, it's A LOT better to get the machine you need to last through all your projects and bite the bullet once than have to trade in or sell and upgrade multiple times as you will lose thousands in resale value. I would buy all the tractor that you can afford as you will need it in order to clear that land. There are some huge trees.

I definitely don't see a Kubota B sized machine as your long term solution, you will want a much larger tractor to last you longer.

 

[bhh]

No fixed budget yet but the lower it is, the better chance I have at getting it by mrs. bhh.

 

[sam5570]

bhh just want to throw this out there have you had the timber curised is it worth anything my neighbor sold the timber pushed trees over with track loader cut off at the stump made enough money to pay for loader rental and just pushed stumps up in piles and burnt he did 10 acres this way if you want the stumps gone it so much easier to push the tree over than to dig stumps out after tree is gone fif you intend to do this yourself tractor and chainsaw be very careful i see alot of down and dead stuff that means you got some standing dead trees and probably some lodged in other trees they call themm widow makers vey dangrous cutting you have a nice place the creek looks great hope this helps