Bought a place a year and a half ago, and it's been non-stop projects and clean-up. When I first moved in last spring it was probably the first time in a long time anyone had cleaned up all the debris and pine needles. Big, old pine, cedar, juniper and fir were in desperate need of thinning and limbing. Also a few beetle kill, and last winter really did a number on the place and I've cut down probably close to 30 trees already. Several trees also came down or snapped, tons of branches, pine cones and needles everywhere this spring and needed to thin out the trees in some spots.
Since last March I've been doing every thing by hand. Raking pine needles with a rake, bailng fork and wheelbarrow. If I cut down a tree I'd carry the rounds back to the woodshed a couple rounds at a time in the wheelbarrow, and in some places it's uphill. I've lost like 10-12lbs since moving in! In addition to burning, I'm on my fourth 30-yard dumpster for cleanup. The last dumpster just had pine needles in it and it had three tons of pine needles in it! Had a crew come in a couple weeks ago with a skid steer, grapple and masticator to stack some logs closer to the woodshed and grind up everything left over from limbing, get rid of some scrub and bushes, all the old rotting stumps and ground debris. Took a huge weight off me and saved me so much time. No joke, it probably would have taken me a year doing it by hand and only took them six hours. That got me thinking that it was time to finally pull the trigger and get a tractor.
Finally got tired of doing everything by myself without any equipment aside from a few chainsaws and a pole saw. Have most of the trees down that need to come down. Now just need to buck and split the final stack of logs. From here on out it will be routine maintenance (driveway maintenance with grading and snow removal, gathering debris for burn piles like needles, pine cones, limbs, etc., digging out a few smaller stumps, moving some gravel and soil, but nothing major. The one thing I do want to do is dig trenches for a couple freeze-proof hydrants. The house was built in the mid 70's and it's a small Lindal Cedar Home. At some point someone ran PVC underground and there's several faucets that pop out around the bottom acre that are galvanized pipe. Problem is they're buried about a foot down or less in some places, so all the lines need to be bled and water turned off outside before the first freeze in the fall.
The property sit at around 5,000 ft, and the property line along the west is shared with state forest. There are tons of deer, coyote, foxes, huge flocks of turkeys, bald and golden eagles, and have even seen a couple mountain lions. Last year we got about 6 feet of snow, and 3 1/2 feet of that in one week. I cleared my driveway with an MTD snowblower (worked surprisingly well, but took forever) and my one neighbor saved me a few times with his tractor, box blade/scraper and FEL. The bottom acre has the house, a large driveway with a turnaround and a few offshoots for parking and a large, open carport that I use to store my vehicle, a small trailer and my firewood. Top acre is just forestland that has never had anything on it or done to it. That's the spot where I thinned out the trees and limbed a bunch of them and had the skid steer come in and clean up and have a nice fire break now.
So two days ago I pulled the trigger in a BX23S. Kabobs seem to be very popular around here. You definitely see more orange tractors at homes than any other. It's a rural area with a lot of cattle and alfalfa farms, and a little further out where I am in the start of the Cascade foothills it's people on smaller plots that consist of a few acres, and then beyond that nothing but state land and open range.
My neighbor across the road has a BX23S and 3 acres. They've done so much to their land with that little tractor and it impressed me. I've been told always go bigger, and I get that. I have a couple chainsaws, a Stihl MS400 C-M and an older MS180, and the MS400 gets used 95% of the time. It's so much fun to use. But I simply couldn't justify spending nearly 50% more for an L-Series tractor with all the other projects I have going on and in the works. Ive already done a lot of improvements and renovations inside the home, have plans to put a nice shop in where the carport currently stands and need to replace the deck that wraps around three sides of the house, so I have to be a bit responsible financially.
I've been wanting a tractor since I moved in, and honestly that should have been the first thing I purchased instead of waiting this long. I really couldn't pass up 0% financing. Tractor obviously came with the FEL and backhoe. Dealer also specs out all of their BX23's with the mechanical thumb and the quick disconnect for the front hydraulics, all things I had spec's out online before going to the dealership. Only other attachments I went with were font forks, a land rake and a 48" box scraper. Parts of the property are a bit rocky, but still think there are enough areas that justify the purchase of the land rake. Anything I can do to speed up pine needle, pine cone and debris collection is awesome. The box scraper is the one thing I'm most excited about. I've watched my one neighbor do so much with it. Grading, spreading out/leveling areas, snow removal, and the one neighbor that has a big tractor even used it to push over stumps for me (wont be doing that with the little BX23S!) Would have loved to get the grapple, but the cost of it and the labor to install the third function combined with the limited lifting capability of the BX23S with the grapple installed just didn't seem worth it at this point. Also have an area that I call the "rock garden" that consists of baseball to bowling ball size rocks that I'd love to clean up and relocate all the rocks which would open up an other area I could run through with the land rake (I joke that I am a pine needle and rock farmer).
Sure, a bigger tractor is always better, but the way I look at it, the BX23S didn't break the bank and is just going to make my life easier. And although it will be slower and not as capable compared to a larger tractor, it's a heck of a lot faster than just me and a shovel.
Since last March I've been doing every thing by hand. Raking pine needles with a rake, bailng fork and wheelbarrow. If I cut down a tree I'd carry the rounds back to the woodshed a couple rounds at a time in the wheelbarrow, and in some places it's uphill. I've lost like 10-12lbs since moving in! In addition to burning, I'm on my fourth 30-yard dumpster for cleanup. The last dumpster just had pine needles in it and it had three tons of pine needles in it! Had a crew come in a couple weeks ago with a skid steer, grapple and masticator to stack some logs closer to the woodshed and grind up everything left over from limbing, get rid of some scrub and bushes, all the old rotting stumps and ground debris. Took a huge weight off me and saved me so much time. No joke, it probably would have taken me a year doing it by hand and only took them six hours. That got me thinking that it was time to finally pull the trigger and get a tractor.
Finally got tired of doing everything by myself without any equipment aside from a few chainsaws and a pole saw. Have most of the trees down that need to come down. Now just need to buck and split the final stack of logs. From here on out it will be routine maintenance (driveway maintenance with grading and snow removal, gathering debris for burn piles like needles, pine cones, limbs, etc., digging out a few smaller stumps, moving some gravel and soil, but nothing major. The one thing I do want to do is dig trenches for a couple freeze-proof hydrants. The house was built in the mid 70's and it's a small Lindal Cedar Home. At some point someone ran PVC underground and there's several faucets that pop out around the bottom acre that are galvanized pipe. Problem is they're buried about a foot down or less in some places, so all the lines need to be bled and water turned off outside before the first freeze in the fall.
The property sit at around 5,000 ft, and the property line along the west is shared with state forest. There are tons of deer, coyote, foxes, huge flocks of turkeys, bald and golden eagles, and have even seen a couple mountain lions. Last year we got about 6 feet of snow, and 3 1/2 feet of that in one week. I cleared my driveway with an MTD snowblower (worked surprisingly well, but took forever) and my one neighbor saved me a few times with his tractor, box blade/scraper and FEL. The bottom acre has the house, a large driveway with a turnaround and a few offshoots for parking and a large, open carport that I use to store my vehicle, a small trailer and my firewood. Top acre is just forestland that has never had anything on it or done to it. That's the spot where I thinned out the trees and limbed a bunch of them and had the skid steer come in and clean up and have a nice fire break now.
So two days ago I pulled the trigger in a BX23S. Kabobs seem to be very popular around here. You definitely see more orange tractors at homes than any other. It's a rural area with a lot of cattle and alfalfa farms, and a little further out where I am in the start of the Cascade foothills it's people on smaller plots that consist of a few acres, and then beyond that nothing but state land and open range.
My neighbor across the road has a BX23S and 3 acres. They've done so much to their land with that little tractor and it impressed me. I've been told always go bigger, and I get that. I have a couple chainsaws, a Stihl MS400 C-M and an older MS180, and the MS400 gets used 95% of the time. It's so much fun to use. But I simply couldn't justify spending nearly 50% more for an L-Series tractor with all the other projects I have going on and in the works. Ive already done a lot of improvements and renovations inside the home, have plans to put a nice shop in where the carport currently stands and need to replace the deck that wraps around three sides of the house, so I have to be a bit responsible financially.
I've been wanting a tractor since I moved in, and honestly that should have been the first thing I purchased instead of waiting this long. I really couldn't pass up 0% financing. Tractor obviously came with the FEL and backhoe. Dealer also specs out all of their BX23's with the mechanical thumb and the quick disconnect for the front hydraulics, all things I had spec's out online before going to the dealership. Only other attachments I went with were font forks, a land rake and a 48" box scraper. Parts of the property are a bit rocky, but still think there are enough areas that justify the purchase of the land rake. Anything I can do to speed up pine needle, pine cone and debris collection is awesome. The box scraper is the one thing I'm most excited about. I've watched my one neighbor do so much with it. Grading, spreading out/leveling areas, snow removal, and the one neighbor that has a big tractor even used it to push over stumps for me (wont be doing that with the little BX23S!) Would have loved to get the grapple, but the cost of it and the labor to install the third function combined with the limited lifting capability of the BX23S with the grapple installed just didn't seem worth it at this point. Also have an area that I call the "rock garden" that consists of baseball to bowling ball size rocks that I'd love to clean up and relocate all the rocks which would open up an other area I could run through with the land rake (I joke that I am a pine needle and rock farmer).
Sure, a bigger tractor is always better, but the way I look at it, the BX23S didn't break the bank and is just going to make my life easier. And although it will be slower and not as capable compared to a larger tractor, it's a heck of a lot faster than just me and a shovel.
