New property - what equipment to buy first on a budget?

[EventingMaff]

We’ve just purchased a 4+ acre property, mostly cleared with grass, surrounded on 3 sides by woods (lots of leaf fall), and a long driveway. We’re coming from a <1/2 acre property where tiny electric equipment was plenty for our lawn / garden maintenance needs. New property has a barn and intention would be to bring horses home in the coming years.

We’re looking trying to decide what first equipment purchase makes the most sense. Budget is TIGHT so ideally we have something that can get us by for a few years until we have some financial breathing room (and lived experience) to upgrade / round out equipment needs. We’ll be buying significantly used regardless right now.

1. Would you go with a garden tractor or ZTR? Inclination for a garden tractor is that we could use it for mowing, plowing / snowblowing, leaf management, and for towing a small trailer for manure / water buckets down the line

2. What is the minimum size / power you’d look at for our needs? Property is mostly flat but some lawn has a gentle slope

3. We’d love to let ~1 acre of the grass grow up, probably bush hogging 2x a year vs maintaining as true lawn – would a small tractor or ZTR be able to manage that or would we be looking to outsource that job?

Husband I are not mechanically savvy (currently) but interested to learn basics. We do have my father somewhat locally who has several older tractors he runs on a 50 acre property that we can lean on as we learn. So another lean toward a simple mechanical tractor is ability to potentially do straightforward repairs.

[LCDR]

I for one say do not buy a lawn tractor.

A subcompact or compact tractor with a front end loader, a three point hitch, and a belly or mid-mount mower would be akin to buying a Swiss Army knife. It will do a lot of things with one package. It may not do all of the jobs as quickly or quite as well as multiple pieces of dedicated equipment but is a great way to start. And it may be all you will need now and into the future once you master its uses. It will be more expensive than a lawn tractor, but lawn tractors do not have front end loaders, and that is the one piece of the puzzle I personally would find it very hard to ever give up.

And when you buy diesel, get as close to 25 hp as possible without going over. 25HP is the cutoff for not having to be equipped with regeneration technology. which is an expensive pain in the butt to own and operate.

[Annie10]

We have a small tractor (Kubota L3430) and a small lawn tractor.
There are a lot of trees on the 2 acres that the house, pool etc are on and it was a Huuuge PITA to try to mow it with the brush hog. So I use the lawn tractor (cub cadet) around the house and the Kubota on the rest of it.
But yes it is nice to use the small one also to pull a small cart with hay or whatever and honestly sometimes I end up just using that to mow my pastures (3 acres) since it is awful for me to try to hook up the brush hog by myself.
If you’re having to do fencing or other big stuff definitely get a small tractor. Get a bucket with a fork attachment . You won’t be sorry .

[EventingMaff]

I’ll need to do some research on the differences between subcompact and compact – but my understanding is that there are a series of larger lawn mowers / very small tractors called “Garden Tractors” that have more of the HP, hitch, and torque requirements to get moderate jobs done.

But I’m not sure if these would fall into the smallest end of the subcompact or compact tractor range? Or whether we need to consider “leveling up”

My dad has a friend selling a Wheel Horse 312H in good shape that we had been considering that comes with plow and mow deck attachment. Old but extremely well maintained with low hours and in great shape and apparently these things are battle cruisers that last forever…but now I’m wondering if we need to get a “real” tractor

[luvmyhackney]

My JD 1025r would do everything you need except it can’t move round bales and super heavy stuff.

Buy whatever brand you have a repair shop close by.

For mowing you will eventually want a zero turn, commercial grade. So handy and fun as all get out to drive. It’s great for everywhere except pastures.

[LCDR]

Deere 1025R is what I have too. Almost ten years old and has never needed any repairs, it now has about 1875 hours, so it gets worked pretty often. As I said before, it will move a lot of dirt if you have time. This is when I expanded my dressage arena from small to standard , so that’s topsoil from a 20 by 20 meter area, It took two full tractor seat days, and by volume I ended up with about 10 triaxle dump truck loads of “free” topsoil to spread and level other areas. At my local prices, that is $6,400 worth of delivered screened topsoil. The tractor was a bit over $15,000 new.

[Demerara_Stables]

We have this little guy that essentially came with our property and I wouldn’t pick anything different. We also came from no land and now have 6.75 acres. We use it to:

Mow the lawn and the pasture
Drag the arena
Move manure
Move jumps/hay/dirt/arena sand/building materials
Dig post holes
Lift the generator into the bed of the truck
Etc

Definitely recommend a small tractor. You can get a finish mower later but this will do way more than a lawn tractor.

[lenapesadie]

We have a flat 3.37 acres that we purchased with a grassy center and monstrous hedges / woods on 3 sides. Similar sounding to your property but we do not get snow and Mr LS is a mechanic by trade.

The first thing we bought was a used gas powered golf cart as we already had a riding mower. I love that golf cart. The handiest thing on the farm. I have a little dump trailer it pulls.

The second thing we bought was an 8N ford tractor. It has a three point hitch but no FEL. The price was right and it’s a real dependable machine.

We have an assortment of attachments for the tractor. Honestly the mower (bush hog) is used less each year.

This year we purchased a newer and larger riding mower. We opted against a zero turn. It didn’t make sense for us and our small farm. Plus the regular lawn mower rides better in our opinion. The old riding mower is now my paddock mower. Since I’m in a warm zone and grow warm season grasses I don’t have to have the high mow height that more traditional pasture grasses do best with.

We had a very tight budget to get started with and I think we got the most bang for our dollars getting the used, smaller equipment. The power of the tractor was most needed as we cleared out the hedges / wood lines. I hire out odd jobs that require larger equipment and have been very satisfied with that arrangement.

[SusanO]

When looking at small tractors - vet the repair shops first. The Mahindra tractor dealers around here can’t wait to sell you a tractor but their repair shops are slow and awful. I am not in love with my Mahindra but it is paid for. It has terrible vibration for what I have done with it and the parts are really flimsy. I finally found a small shop that will service it and not break things.

And I would not spend the money on a tractor without a FEL. I am not great with mine but most of the tractor work I do is using the loader. Decide if you want to feed round bales. Those are really heavy and will require a bigger FEL unless you want to manually move them around and that is not always feasible.

[Bonnie2]

Tractor! Everything LCDR said. You are not going to plow your driveway or move stone with the zero turn! Golf carts are great. ZTRs are great. 4x4s are very useful. All may be in your future. But if you can buy one piece of equipment that can do the most jobs on a small place it is the JD 1025R!

[Jarpur]

Depends what you want to do on your place. We have a Cub Cadet garden tractor (more powerful than a lawn tractor or riding mower). Handles mowing our very slightly sloping pastures fine, as well as dragging our sand dressage arena.

When we need something more powerful (once in a blue moon), we rent something. Usually a Bobcat – to spread gravel and move things – but it’s (rarely) been a tractor with a front end loader. Way, way, way less expensive to occasionally rent a piece of heavy equipment than to purchase a real tractor.

Our choice came from following advice we were given by a former BO, and we’ve never regretted it. We normally feed small square hay bales, but I figured out a way to move large rounds without a tractor with a FEL the one year we fed those.

[SusanO]

Oh and don’t buy a tractor that is not a 4 wheel drive. I am surprised they even make anything else. If you have a FEL it comes in handy should you drive your tractor where you should not and get stuck. And yes - you can get stuck with 4WD. But easier to get a tractor out than a lawn mower.

[poltroon]

Start out by listing your jobs to be done.

Do you need to mow? A property that small, with animals on it, you may not. I have to do a lot of weed-eating, which I do with an electric string trimmer. It can only do about 25 minutes at a time but that’s also all about my body likes to handle (the vibration hurts my wrists; special gloves help). It’s easy to set up and get going so I can do it several times a week instead of in one long session, as I had to with the gas powered one.

Moving bales. Unpleasant chore! However, I find doing it with a tractor is clumsy and takes too long and my barn space doesn’t accommodate the tractor super well. If you are designing, keep this in mind. I move bales and feed with a hand dolly.

Get a great manure cart. Having something to pull it may be very nice especially if your ground isn’t hard and flat. I find that when cleaning stalls, that the worst part isn’t the initial shoveling, but in moving the loaded cart between the barn and the pile. It takes time and effort. Starting up the tractor to do this for small loads is too much hassle - it’s nice to be able to take a larger load and dump it, or to have a smaller, easier vehicle to do it with.

Where will you ride? If you need to maintain arena space, you’ll need a tractor.

Your driveway: figure out what your maintenance needs are for it - snow? Releveling? etc? Perhaps neighbors or previous owners can give you a clue. This may be something you want to equip a tractor for or you may want to hire it.

Most occasional stuff can be hired out, but there’s the hassle of finding someone and arranging it. In some communities this will be easier than others. But if money is really tight, it’s cheaper to bring someone in 1x-2x a year than having and maintaining equipment that is only used occasionally.

[Jarpur]

@poltroon

it’s cheaper to bring someone in 1x-2x a year than having and maintaining equipment that is only used occasionally.

This is our experience.

[Texarkana]

We rented a 5 acre, mostly clear and mostly flat farm in TN for about 5 years. We were able to get by with just a Cub Cadet garden tractor (like a large lawn tractor). It could mow the pastures if we kept up with it regularly, pull a cart, even push a little snow plow. Our landlord had a tractor and would bush hog a few times a year if needed, but we just preferred to use our garden tractor the majority of the time.

We now own an 11 acre farm, all flat and clear land. We have a zero turn and a 28hp tractor. I really hate the zero turn. We thought it would save time, but I wish we would have just gotten another garden tractor for mowing. The zero turn is practically useless in the pastures; they are just too rough and you get bounced around so much it’s not worth it.

[Texarkana]

@SusanO

When looking at small tractors - vet the repair shops first. The Mahindra tractor dealers around here can’t wait to sell you a tractor but their repair shops are slow and awful. I am not in love with my Mahindra but it is paid for. It has terrible vibration for what I have done with it and the parts are really flimsy. I finally found a small shop that will service it and not break things.

We have a Mahindra we bought used. The price was right, but it was “rode hard and put away wet” so to speak by whomever owned it before us. And thank goodness my husband is handy because something breaks on it every other time you use it. If we had to depend on a dealer or repair shop we would never be able to use it.

It’s better than nothing. When it’s working it will do the job. Those are the nicest things I can say about it. Did I mention the price was right? Ha!

[LCDR]

That is the beauty of a subcompact tractor. As I said before, my Deere 1025R is like a Leatherman tool or a Swiss Army knife of farm equipment.

With mine I:

mow pastures
mow the yard
apply fertilizer and lime
move and level dirt
move jumps
groom my arena
unload and move hay bales
drag my gravel driveways
move my two trailers around
unload freight from semi truck deliveries
use it as a powered wheelbarrow
run a rotary cutter (bush hog)
rake pine straw and leaves
use a 40 gallon boom sprayer
pull out tree roots and small stumps

Just the one little tractor to maintain. And it fits into a garage.

[TheJenners]

@EventingMaff

My dad has a friend selling a Wheel Horse 312H in good shape that we had been considering that comes with plow and mow deck attachment. Old but extremely well maintained with low hours and in great shape and apparently these things are battle cruisers that last forever…but now I’m wondering if we need to get a “real” tractor

This sounds ideal actually - tractors are expensive and newer ones like to have a bunch wee things break. Older is better, older and maintained is priceless.

I bought 9 acres with nothing but a lonely little horse barn on it. In the beginning, I use my tractor a lot but it was mostly to do stuff like landscaping and put in a garden, and pull up a dead tree. After the first two years, it got fired up just to drag the arena, because I bought a zero turn mower and never used the bush hog again because the zero turn was so much easier to use and faster to boot, and on a farm time is important. I “sold” my tractor to my Dad and got a 4 wheeler with a winch and use it a lot more, it’s smaller and easier to use, and the two times a year I need a tractor I borrow my old one back. It would be cheaper to rent what you need than buy, by far. I’ve rented equipment here and there, like a skidsteer with a big auger for some some fencing projects, and it was maybe $300 total for the rental, flatbed, and fuel. Way cheaper than purchasing something.

I also designed things and do horse management so I don’t need a tractor. I currently haul my manure away, but even if I wanted a spreader, my 4 wheeler is husky enough to pull it. My pasture drag and two arena drags can be pulled by the 4 wheeler. I don’t (and will never) use round bales. Having something small I can safely handle since I’m here by myself and, like you, not mechanically savvy at all was important to me. I can load my mower or my 4 wheeler into my horse trailer to get it where it needs to go if they need repairs.

Also, the winch has been fantastic for dealing with smaller animals, and spec-wise the 4wheeler is supposed to be able to pull ~1700 pounds.

[SusanO]

Yes I got a great deal on mine used. It only had 30 hours on it and had been taken care of, garage kept and hardly used. And it was less than a year old when I bought it. And I don’t leave it out in the weather and do much with it besides drag the arena and pull the manure spreader. So not a hard life. . But … the plastic pieces break all the time. When I replaced the battery the first time after a year or so the battery cables just crumbled they were so rotten. And nothing from an auto parts store was short enough to fit. The vibration is terrible (farrier says it is the worst vibration he has seen in a tractor) and the hood latch parts have broken from vibration. Other plastic parts have crumbled too.

But it is paid for and generally gets the job done. If I win the lottery I will buy another tractor that is NOT a Mahindra. Otherwise I think I am going to have to deal with it.

[fourfillies]

On a budget I’m sure you can get by with a lawn tractor for a few years. I missed if you are in a snow area, that could be limiting and you might have to pay to have someone plow your driveway. I have a 25hp Massey Ferguson I adore. Bought it used and it’s been a little workhorse. Even used it was probably $8K more than a reliable used lawn tractor.