In all, it's approximately 5600 square feet on 40 acres about 30 minutes from downtown. Apparently I only paid about 20% more than what a 1600 square foot home on a postage stamp lot costs in vicinity of Chicago.
The previous owner was working to sell their tractor to us, a 2002 Kubota L4310, but then received a much better offer from another party.
The goals of said tractor:
To provide for any animal activity on the property (we'll be stabling at least one horse for at least the next 9 months, and the wife wants a damn petting zoo) - likely bush hogging some part of the pastured area if my wife lets me skip out on the finish mowing activity
To keep the driveway free of snow in the winter (driveway is 1/2 mile long, and fully concrete)
To perform trail repair (about 10 years ago, a timber company came in and tore the f*ck out of the woods, left trail ruts, and now it seems like the whole woods doesn't drain. I have an intermittent creek within the west boundary and a small year-round creek within the east boundary. I'd like to maintain some of the old logging trails as they provide for easier access to the property and they canalize the target whitetail deer population to defined intersections overwatched by tree stands, the maintained trails just need to promote natural drainage of the property instead of preventing it as they do now.
To perform trail maintenance (bush hog)
To perform home gardening activities (probably rent a tiller to prepare a garden bed, and will probably put high fence around it to keep the deer out of the sweet corn)
To perform forest management / maintenance / rehabilitation (There's a tremendous amount of standing dead wood and relatively young fallen dead wood on the property which I believe was caused largely by stress from unsupervised and careless timber cutting activity and lack of effective drainage).The state of the timber on the property really is a damned shame, there are a few areas where you can stand and count a dozen trees that are all 12-15" in diameter, but 20-30 feet up the trunks simply end with a sharp point towards the sky, and there's fallen deadwood everywhere - not like some trees have slowly died over the years, but rather there are 12-15" diameter trees lying as massive die-offs that look like they have fallen in the past 6-12 months. The previous owners have a freshly renewed "forestry plan" done for them by the for-profit company that fucked up the land in the first place, which I'll certainly consider; but I'll be having a service forester come out to the property to advise me on what I can do. I don't yet know enough about trees to gather if it's a certain species or group that has died off, so I can't rule out that perhaps these were all ash trees, but it's just such a huge volume of dead wood
Anyways, back to the tractor part of the discussion; we are considering a few options. Among my desires are that I'd like to have something that's about 45hp, loader is a requirement, as well as the ability to clear snow, and a rotary cutter. I'd prefer to clear snow with a skid-steer quick attach snow blade, though I understand the possibility to clear snow with a much simpler and cheaper 3-point blade. I've wanted for years to own a tractor with a cab on it, though I have no real world experience on cab vs. no cab. Lastly, the tractor has to be "wife friendly", so I'd prefer to stay away from the classic geared options.
The first option that we are considering is a used Kubota L4701 HST with loader, 3 years old and 300 hours, so basically a new tractor with some depreciation factored in. A small local dealer wants $23k for it. Maybe it's a good deal, perhaps it's not. It seems like the "appropriate" amount of tractor at an okay price. I also know that If I want more in the next couple years that I can probably sell the tractor and get most of my money back out of it to put towards an upgrade.
We had also been considering buying new. The Kubotas seem to be priced "just okay", looked at the new hollands because the wife liked a blue tractor she saw and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after seeing the pricing of the boomer series - Case is the same, though I'd always pictured myself in a Case Farmall compact. CNH (Case New Holland) puts us about about 45k for a barebones open station tractor with loader.
Enter the "little guy": We stopped at a Rural King store while we were checking out the nearby areas and saw they had tractors in their lot. After doing some research they are reviewed about as well as all of the other brands, but are "obscenely well priced" and they're "fully optioned out" as standard: I'm looking at the 55HP tractor with hydrostatic transmission, operator cab, and front end loader for $30k + tax brand new. I'm a big fan of the idea of a heated cab while plowing snow in the winter, and air conditioning while doing summer tasks. I'm also aware that the cab has the potential to become a hindrance in the woods, though I intend for my trees to all be straight and tall. If we purchased this tractor, we would likely incur a substantial depreciation based on the fact that "RK Tractors" isn't an established brand name, and if we ever wanted to sell and buy a different tractor, we'd probably be eating $5k right off the bat if the tractor were still in good shape, though on the flipside, I can't see that we'd ever intend to "upgrade" beyond this tractor. Note, all of the other options above are cab-less. Also, the Rural King tractors seem to have the best warranty.
I'd especially like opinions on the "used Kubota vs. new Kubota vs. new Rural King" and I'd like to weigh the risk of the Rural King tractors as a young and developing brand while avoiding the argument that "they will break and you'll be completely without a tractor if Rural King stops selling and servicing them" (The manufacturer, TYM, is well established and produces their own tractors - which are literally the same tractors as rural king has sitting on the lot with a different color and different stickers.)
I'd like to avoid any discussion of green tractors. They use proprietary components and they are the single reason that congress had to pass a law specifically legalizing hacking DRM protections to repair **** that you supposedly own.
