What equipment do you need to maintain a 3 acre farm?
There is some equipment that is really necessary in order to keep your property in top condition. Of course, there are many “toys” that would be nice to have, but the cost of buying and maintaining them is much higher than renting them once or twice a year. Depending on how much of your land is grassed for beauty purposes only, how much pasture or garden areas, or perhaps even pens for chickens or sheep, will dictate what equipment you really need. Every property needs some form of lawn or garden tractor, unless you’re a marathon runner and want to push a lawnmower over an acre or two twice a week in the spring. A utility tractor with an engine of 20 HP or less and a 42-inch or 48-inch mower deck can easily handle three acres of lawn. Accessories like a spring-loaded rake that makes it easy to aerate your lawn or a lightweight snowplow for winter can lighten your workload. Turf rollers, seed drills, discs and harrows, power rakes, and even mini-font front-loading buckets can be purchased from many different subcompact tractor and tractor companies.
When you shop, you’ll find that tractors fall into several different categories based on their capabilities. Riding mowers are basically large mowers that can pull a small trailer, a leaf rake, or maybe push a bit of snow. A tractor will weigh more and have stronger and larger components. A tractor may have a slightly larger engine, a cast iron rear deck, and may also be able to handle a snow thrower attachment. A subcompact tractor for around $12000 or less, it’s even heavier, you can use wheel weights or weighted tires, front loader and backhoe attachments and mow 5 acres more easily. The frames are also much stronger and can move mountains of snow with ease. If you own a horse barn or plant a large area in the garden, a subcompact tractor will handle all of these cleaning tasks without breaking a sweat.
A long trailer tag is also a boon when clearing leaves, moving dirt, hauling gravel, or any other yard chore. It’s much easier to load up the trailer with all your spring flowering plants and drive from one bed to the next along with your trowels and soil supplements than it is to haul everything by hand. Moving buckets of water to pens or moving stones or firewood are tasks that are carried out in a small trailer. My trailer is now over twenty years old, and other than some occasional touch ups of paint and grease, it’s still going strong.
A gas powered leaf blower and vacuum is also a real time saver. From blowing sidewalks and patios clean, to removing leaves from flower beds, a gas-powered leaf blower does the trick. If you have any kind of hedges or trees in shape, an electric hedge trimmer makes that task easy as well. Hand-trimming a hundred feet of hedge is no joke. A good wheelbarrow is a tool that is often overlooked. Don’t buy one of those $29 wheelbarrows. If you’re paying around $100 or so, you’re in the right neighborhood. Oak handles, heavy duty polyethylene or metal tubing (I prefer polyethylene, never rusts), and a ten inch tire is the bare minimum. Mine is now about twelve years old and I have replaced the handles only once.
I own a fairly large wooded area and the grassy areas also have a lot of trees. These produce just tons of twigs and fallen leaves each year. I bought a small chipper for branches 3″ and smaller and it does a good job. Anything larger than 3″ cuts for firewood. This machine produces a good amount of mulch for us, so it was well worth the price.
Roto-tilling my garden once a year didn’t seem to justify buying a tiller that would be sitting around for 11 and a half months out of the year. Daily rent is about $45, so for $45 I grow our garden and the rental center store can maintain it all year.
A pressure washer is another great tool for the average household. Washing decks or sidewalks, house siding or barn floors is much easier with a pressure washer. They are pretty cheap and do a great job. Maintenance is basically making sure it is drained to prevent it from freezing when in storage and checking the engine oil.
If you own these tools, you can pretty much get by. As time goes by and you can afford it, adding a few extra implements to the tractor, like a post digger or dozer blade, can make larger jobs easier and faster.
Ask your salesperson what size machine you need and they’ll be happy to help you decide. They want a happy customer to come back and recommend them to others.
pete ackerson