New member, looking for advice

[smitesmash]

OP: I had a bit of a time parsing your original request? You mentioned farm land, which was rented out; you mentioned pasture lands, but that too was being rented out...
What I got left with was a 900'+ of driveway, and < 2 acres of lawn to mow.

What, if any are your plans for the 15ac of woods? Is this something that you are planning to do anything with? Making trails, harvesting firewood, building a pond?
What about the pasture, if you are not going to be renting it out, will you need to mow that? If so you may find that you will need a brushhog/field mower.
In that case, concentrate on what you want to do with this. A small tractor will work for most everything, until the first time that you have to dig out a stump, by hand, which is never fun.

A riding lawn mower of ATV and pull a utility cart, and help you get firewood and garden supplies. But you will need a CUT to run even a smaller chipper. An ATV with a skid-sled can help you bring home whole trees. But you may want an FEL (or boom pole) to lift trees for cutting, or a b

Will there be digging involved. Landscaping or moving rocks. Any land clearing (the attached picture was from me removing a stump, when I was clearing an area for a 12x12 shed)

Another set of questions has to do with your natural inclinations. Are you the type who "likes getting dirty" or "will get dirty if I have to" or "would prefer to pay someone else to get dirty" Think of this in terms of building a shed, or cutting down a tree. (my dad ALWAYS pays someone to come and cut down his trees)

My recommendation is to look for a smaller used SCUT, Kubota BX, or JD 1 series (my first tractor was a JD 650), get some time on it, and see how it is being used, and how it fits you and your lifestyle.

 

[paulfun9]

For your BX25, that would probably mean you waited until the snow was a couple of feet deep. If you're getting that much snow you're going to have to make multiple trips anyway, so not letting it get super deep shouldn't be a huge issue. There are a lot of discussions on the topic, and the folks up north mostly seem to say it really isn't a problem.

The problem with this solution is that it requires you to be at home during each and every storm. For many including myself, for most snow storms I am away working and only get to come home to my snowed in property when the storm is over. I also find it costs less time and fuel to simply clear the driveway and access road one time when the storm is done rather than having to keep going back out every hour or so.
Snow drifting will keep me going back out depending on snow and wind but to have to go out several times per storm every storm would be nothing more than a pain in the ----!

 

[GManBart]

The problem with this solution is that it requires you to be at home during each and every storm. For many including myself, for most snow storms I am away working and only get to come home to my snowed in property when the storm is over. I also find it costs less time and fuel to simply clear the driveway and access road one time when the storm is done rather than having to keep going back out every hour or so.
Snow drifting will keep me going back out depending on snow and wind but to have to go out several times per storm every storm would be nothing more than a pain in the ----!

So, what you're saying is what we already know...there is there really is no one perfect solution. Well that, and you're in the minority of folks who aren't home during most storms.

If someone wants to move snow with a smaller machine, they'll have to do it multiple times per (bad) storm regardless of what setup they have. If they want to use a plow, they need to have a lot of extra room to push that snow, or they'll wind up with a driveway too narrow to use. If they don't want to back up while throwing snow, they need a more expensive front blower and mid-PTO, or pull-type rear blower....etc, etc, etc. Sure, everybody could go out and buy a large machine with a front-mount blower, but just the cost of the blower and mid-PTO alone would be too expensive for many folks.

The important point is that there are lots of options out there...I'm taking advantage of several of them already, and plan to add another soon (shovel, walk-behind snow thrower, 3pt back blade, 4x4 truck/plow and eventually 3pt pull-type snow thrower).

 

[paulfun9]

What I am saying is simply my experience so he/she can make an informed decision based on all of our experience.

I highly doubt I am the only one who dosnt want to get up in the middle of the night and have to keep going out and plow open the driveway/access road or stay home and keep plowing my own driveway and access road over and over again. what happens when it snows do we all just up and go home from work or do we have to stay and keep working till the day is done. Not everyone is retired or self employed and even some of us who are self employed have to work during the storms to keep those business lots that the others are employed at open for them as most people who plow big business are under contract and cant afford to loose the business.
So without acting or pretending to know everything I simply add my experience and feeling on the subject in hopes they can see which choice fits them best rather than ending up with a machine that dosnt fit their needs..

AS for having to plow multiple times no matter what the set up with a little machine is ? Someone needs to explain that to me as even with my little JD I still waited till it was over to go out and plow even if I was at home during the storm.

As for the other options you plan to get and use I have sold them all off. What has stayed was the rear mount blower on the little JD and a snow shovel. I made a few changes to my walk ways so that only the snow blower and shovel are needed here for snow clean up. The shovel is for use on the steps and for the little bit left right up close to things.

The plow truck couldn't get threw the deep snow unless I was home and plowed every so often during the storm. Doing walkway with the walk behind blower was more of a chore than I liked. Using the rear mounted blade was also a chore as I was mostly forced to drive backwards and push the snow rather than going forward and getting stuck with the little machine or having to spend much more time using the loader for initial clean up.

What my personal needs and experience has shown me is that if using a little to mid size machine the loader and rear mounted push type blower are the two weapons to have to cover your bases the best for overall digging out. Now if your into having more and more toys to play with and don't mind having to maintain them all which can also be costly and time consuming not to mention the space they take up then feel free to buy more than is needed to accomplish the task. I will be inside sharing a nice cup of hot chocolate in front of the fire place with my better half!

 

[GManBart]

What my personal needs and experience has shown me is that if using a little to mid size machine the loader and rear mounted push type blower are the two weapons to have to cover your bases the best for overall digging out. Now if your into having more and more toys to play with and don't mind having to maintain them all which can also be costly and time consuming not to mention the space they take up then feel free to buy more than is needed to accomplish the task. I will be inside sharing a nice cup of hot chocolate in front of the fire place with my better half!

Right, that's for your situation, and it's great you've come up with a good solution, but you already have tractors for other purposes. The OP doesn't even own a machine yet, and hasn't talked about any normal "tractor" work like brush hogging, or plowing, etc. That's probably why he mentioned a skid steer in his first post....pretty much just FEL work.

I'm certainly not into owning more stuff than necessary, but it's nice to have options that can save time (I can make more money, and build more storage space, but I can't make more time). I bought the plow for a different property, but I still use it the most because it's normally the fastest for my situation. Still, we sometimes get major storms where a blower would save me time in the long run, so I'm planning on getting one. I have a hard time imaging a storm so bad that it would overwhelm my Massey with a 78" pull-type blower on the 3pt, but I guess it could happen...hopefully I'll have my dozer running properly by then!

Suggesting that having multiple snow weapons would add significant "costly" and "time consuming" maintenance is kind of hard to imagine unless people are buying junk. A couple of shots of Fluid Film, and a little grease here and there, and that's about it unless something unusual happens.

 

[paulfun9]

Im confused! You cant make more time but you can do maint on multiple machines and if need be build more storage space which cost both money and time? I guess a plow truck or a powered walk behind blower dosnt need oil fuel , air filters chain checks adjustments hyd fluid oil filters or a clean up after use. I guess bearings and seals don't need checked or changed when they wear or show signs of wear?
Fact is if you want your machines to last without major break downs in the long run you need to be more prudent with maint than slapping some grease on and spaying some lube.

Now to get back to my post and yours which wasn't directly related to the person who started this thread (but I hope is learning something about their needs from It) You are telling someone who has a small BX tractor that they are doing it wrong because they have to make multiple passes due to their machine but still recommending a pull type blower based on other peoples needs when they clearly stated their resolve for the push type blower.
My experience with the BX is that they suck in the snow and I have personally had them stuck more than once out here! So mounting a pull type blower would not be a viable option on one IMHO! Having to dig out after a storm that would normally give the bx a hard time for traction with a rear mounted pull type blower would be simply put a long time consuming ordeal and lets face it we all have different needs and wants based on our time and expectations so arguing is actually futile on your part because even your massey could NOT make it down my driveway when the wind whips up those snow drifts with a rear mounted pull type blower. Trust me when I say I have had bigger better machines stuck out there in those drifts and so have the neighbors!

 

[check]

For your BX25, that would probably mean you waited until the snow was a couple of feet deep. If you're getting that much snow you're going to have to make multiple trips anyway, so not letting it get super deep shouldn't be a huge issue. There are a lot of discussions on the topic, and the folks up north mostly seem to say it really isn't a problem.

Actually my rear blower, the B 2789, for my BX 25, could handle 2 feet no problem, but I've never had that much. Nor have I ever had to make multiple passes with it. It's quite the beast, and so I am confident that it will handle anything, especially because it is so sturdy compared to the front mount model. The OP's 900 foot driveway is a very long driveway, and it would be a big pain to have to move those windrows after plowing until the road got too narrow. I also have an ATV, so what I do for smaller amounts of snow, and for the sake of speed, is plow with a $500 snowplow that I put on the front of ATV, and then I will use the blower if I need it, or when I want to blow away the windrows after a few smaller snow falls.* This system works great, and especially at the beginning of the snow season, when I plow with the ATV, I can leave a little bit of snow on the driveway, and I pack it down as I'm driving with the ATV. Then, we have a nice hard packed base for when I use the blower, so that I do not pick up gravel.

*Another nice thing about the ATV plow setup is that you can clear a path in a big hurry for when e.g., you arrive home and can't even get in to the driveway, or when you need to get the tractor out of the garage before you start the blower. I generally like to plow 2 rows down the middle of the driveway first (one pass in each direction), which I can do easily for anything up to about 8". (This takes mere seconds, because the ATV moves so fast and has such excellent traction.) Then I make 2 passes with the rear puich-type blower (one on each sides, where the windrow is), and that's it. Works very well! On the other hand, if I have a large amount of snow I go straight for the tractor and I can usually get away with 3 passes (the third one being a "clean-up" pass for the middle. This, of course, is when it is the most fun (remember the fun factor?), because there's nothing like watching THE BEAST chew into a pile of snow that is as high as the blower is.

Kind of like this:



Regarding traction, I have NEVER run out of traction when I had these on:

 

[Cherokee140]

About six companies make snow blowers that mount on the 3pt, but work driving forward. Some even add a hydraulically actuated scrape blade behind the blower so you can back up to walls/garage doors, drop the blade, scrape forward, raise the blade, back up, then blow the snow you just scraped...can't do that with a front mount. They are usually less expensive than front mount, and you don't have to spend a boatload of cash on a mid-PTO for the tractor. In places that get a lot of snow (Canada, etc) these are pretty much the preferred method for use with a tractor.

Really, so you drive forward running over the snow, then the blower behind you picks it up and tosses it away.....that does not seem like it would work very well. I have only used them that mount on the front and still have traction problems from time to time pushing the snow....it is heavy, I can only imagine if you had the driving wheels in 13" of snow. One year I did not have the blower mounted on the tractor and it was in a different building, the drifts so high I could not get the tractor out....I think it would be real bad to have to get all 4 wheels in the snow and in a 4' drift before the snow blower started to do anything.....to me it just seems stupid....I want the snow away before the tractor has to drive in it.

(am I misunderstanding your post) ?

 

[XMS]

Hah. I am new here but want to poke some of you all the same.

I used a tiny snow power shovel - one of those things with a itty-bitty power head that pushed snow forward when you rammed the snow with it - in Syracuse, NY to clear 2-3 foot dumps and drifts pretty much my whole childhood. We couldn't afford a real blower, so it was that thing and shovels. It was tiny, but we thought it was a god the way it saved us from the shovels. My brother still has it and uses it to clear his roof in the winter, but uses a Bobcat CT440 with a simple blade for everything else. His view is the same as mine: if something like a 40 HP tractor cannot clear it, then call it a day and watch the TV. Really, you cannot prep for everything. Some days just suck.

Sorry, but I hadn't seen a "When I was a kid..." poke in the eye within this thread, yet.

 

[GManBart]

Im confused!

It does seems that way.

You cant make more time but you can do maint on multiple machines and if need be build more storage space which cost both money and time? I guess a plow truck or a powered walk behind blower dosnt need oil fuel , air filters chain checks adjustments hyd fluid oil filters or a clean up after use. I guess bearings and seals don't need checked or changed when they wear or show signs of wear?
Fact is if you want your machines to last without major break downs in the long run you need to be more prudent with maint than slapping some grease on and spaying some lube.

I already own a truck that gets normal maintenance. Adding a plow created no additional maintenance. The plow hasn't needed anything other than a few shots of fluid film before putting it up for the season. My walk-behind blower hasn't even needed a spark plug change since I've had it, and it gets used very little, so at worst it would mean one oil change per year....wow, huge commitment there. A 3pt snow thrower wouldn't add any significant amount of work to keep in top shape...it's not like bearings wear out, or any of that other stuff happens regularly for homeowner use. If I was plowing the local supermarket parking lot, I'm sure things would be different, but that sort of usage is for a different thread.

I was building a barn anyway, so making it big enough to hold the one more implement really wasn't enough of an issue to even think about.

Now to get back to my post and yours which wasn't directly related to the person who started this thread (but I hope is learning something about their needs from It) You are telling someone who has a small BX tractor that they are doing it wrong because they have to make multiple passes due to their machine but still recommending a pull type blower based on other peoples needs when they clearly stated their resolve for the push type blower.

That isn't what I said, or what I was trying to say, and I wasn't recommending a pull type blower to someone who already owned a push type. My point was that if someone with a BX was running into snow too deep to use a pull-type blower, they probably waited too long because even a smaller machine can handle quite a bit of snow with either type of blower.

My experience with the BX is that they suck in the snow and I have personally had them stuck more than once out here! So mounting a pull type blower would not be a viable option on one IMHO!

Funny, just a post after this Check says his BX does great in the snow, and he has no problems with traction.

even your massey could NOT make it down my driveway when the wind whips up those snow drifts with a rear mounted pull type blower. Trust me when I say I have had bigger better machines stuck out there in those drifts and so have the neighbors!

That just means it calls for a bigger machine. In places where they get boatloads of snow every year, tractors with pull-type blowers are the standard. Might just be a reason for that....