Well, we have pulled the trigger on a Branson 4225h with loader, backhoe, and grapple. To be delivered in April. Thanks for all the advice in this thread.
Both the Branson and a Kubota L4060 would have fit the bill, and -- in our neck of the woods -- were priced similarly. The Branson led on specs that mattered, but even more important was dealer.
The Branson dealer is en route between our home and the property we'll use the tractor on. Knowledgeable guy, 20 years selling Bransons, repair shop where techs get their hands dirty really fixing stuff. Was much happier showing me what custom mods they had figured out for a disabled fellow to be able to use a backhoe that going over paperwork in his messy office. Together with the "do things mechanically" philosophy of the Branson design, this inspired confidence for the long term. Kubota dealer also good guy, long-term dealer, but his gleaming glass-wall dealership is an hour in the wrong direction, and philosophy is much more "when there's a problem, we'll swap out the electronics with a replacement so you're quickly on your way". That's convenient when you're under warranty, but smells of $$ afterwards and who knows what happens when your model is 10 years old. The Branson dealer did a better job explaining to me what's special about Kubota's HST+ than the Kubota dealer, who pointed me at their marketing material for "details" since he clearly didn't know. Bottom line at Kubota was "we're the market leader so we're clearly good, we don't need to sell too much".
Kioti and LS had tractors which weren't bad, but seemed (on paper) less a good fit. Their dealers struck out their at bats by not having the appropriate models in stock to see and touch, and more importantly by bad selling. The Kioti dealer decided within 5 minutes his "best selling tractor" (even if he didn't have any in stock...) was the answer for me, and was utterly impervious to gentle prods that I had (based on suggestions here, in part) been thinking of something quite different. The LS dealer offered a good price, but tried selling by putting down other brands with information I knew from my research was factually incorrect. Since both dealers weren't conveniently located either, really no reason to keep them in the mix.
Looking forward to doing stuff in the spring!
(By the way, I appreciated all the feedback above also on what to do myself vs outsource, tractor vs ATV vs miniex etc. I didn't reply to all of it directly, and some of it just reflected differences how people interpreted my description of our needs. But it all helped in our thinking, including just helping us become clearer on what we do and don't want to do right off the bat!)
