jordanh said:
I'm using this to prepare an acre or less of ground for an orchard then will use to mow and spray once the trees go in come spring. It will also be used to push snow, prepare garden plots and food plots with plow and cultivator and disc, and probably some light landscaping/dirt work. So there will be need for power and weight for ground engagement although that will not be the primary purpose. The initial brush hogging of the ground to get it down for planting will be some thick rough stuff but it will get easier over time with repeated mowing and improvements.
Now, I appreciate that Jordanh has dismissed the CK20. To each to his own. However, I will reiterate the argument in favor of a smaller tractor in the 20hp range just for others who read this thread and to address a couple of comments in other posts.
First, I have quoted his original post above. He is working on LESS than one acre. How can anyone justify more than 20hp is my question? The CK20 is if anything more tractor than can be justified. Personal choice rules when comfort is the topic but for comparison I fit fine on a CK20 and I am 6'5" and 225lbs. I have the older non suspension seat which I don't recommend but the newer models all come with a full suspension seat too.
Dargo makes a comparison to Cut Cadet lawn tractors which is misleading. Most lawn tractors are gas powered and cannot be compared Hp to Hp with a diesel. I own a 20+ Hp lawn tractor that has only a fraction of the power of the CK20 for real work. A 21Hp diesel has a lot of power to do serious work. Dargo also mentions something about how a smaller (than 30hp) heavier tractor will be inefficient. I don't agree at all. You just use the appropriate sized implements and you are exactly as "efficient" as a larger tractor with larger implements. A CK20 will pull a 48" implement such as a box blade every bit as efficiently as a CK30 will pull a 60" BB on the same ground. What size implements do you really need to prepare "less than one acre" anyway???? If it is going to be an orchard you'd be better off with a smaller tractor and implements for maintenance duties in the future anyway. Also, Jordanh mentions doing some work for neighbors or acquaintances...It is easier to trailer a CK20 and implements than a bigger tractor.
I would estimate, based on a fair amount of experience clearing badly overgrown land of brush and trees with a CK20 and appropriate implements (mostly 48" bush hog and grapple, some chain saw), that Jordanh could clear his orchard site of brush and small trees in about 16-24hrs of seat time (based on my experience clearing 3 thickly overgrown acres so far, your mileage will vary depending on exactly what type of overgrowth you need to clear, however I cleared a 40x50 foot area in about an hour yesterday, see photos below and given that rate of clearing an acre would take exactly 21 hours). It would take a lot longer without a grapple. If JorhanH's land just needs straight bush hogging (i.e. you can drive the tractor straight over the land rather than backing it into thickets and around trees, then one acre of bush hogging would only take a couple of hours and there is no need for a grapple. I have not plowed my land but assuming it would go a bit slower than aggressive raking, it shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours to prepare an acre with either 48" BB or a specialized plotmaster type tool. Maybe double that if you plow the land from different angles the first time. I'd say that is pretty darn efficient land clearing and that having a CK30 would not change the amount of total time by much at all. Arguably, if you spent your money on the extra horsepower rather than on a grapple you would spend three or four times as long clearing the land with the larger tractor (right Highbeam?
).
Now, if you came at that land with a D9 bulldozer you could probably clear the acre in less than half a day and if you used a 90Hp Ag tractor you could certainly plow the cleared land in half an hour or so. Maybe that is what Dargo is referring to as efficient
.
My bottom line is that guys on TBN tend to recommend and buy too much horsepower for what their needs really are. I'm not arguing there is no role for higher hp tractors but rather that the 20hp class tractor is a very effective machine for almost anything that needs doing on 4-5 or less acres of land. Buy the correctly sized implements and you will be able to do virtually anything a 30hp machine can do with at most a 20-25% time penalty (and that is being very generous to the 30hp tractor). The economics of 20 vs 30 hp tractors are pretty clearing in favor of the 20hp machine both due to lower initial cost and also the lower cost of implements, trailers, towing vehicle, fuel etc. The storage space needed for tractor and implements are less too. Indeed, to turn this efficiency argument around, I'd say that the 20hp class are actually far more efficient tractors (for up to 4-5 acres anyway) than the bigger machines.
I think sometimes guys who operate larger equipment on larger tracts of land (Dargo for example) underestimate the capabilities of the smaller diesel tractors on smaller plots. I would not want to tackle 20 acres of crop land with a 21hp tractor but for the acre that Jordanh has in mind, it think that a CK20 would not only be capable but that anything bigger would actually be less "efficient".
Photos below show the type of land that I can clear at a rate of about 2000 sq ft per hour or 20 hours per acre using just bush hog and grapple. I leave trees bigger than 5" to be cut later by chain saw. Smaller trees are pushed over by FEL then ripped out of the ground by the grapple and carted away. The debris from this area that was not chewed up by the bush hog was carted off with the grapple to a pile about 100 yards away.
