MSU Red Cedar Message Board

Our Farmall is still running strong. And there's nothing like the sound of that engine...and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Tractor Owners, if you don't run a farm, what do you use your for?

Serious question.

Food plotting for wildlife, driveway plowing, pulling a trailer, yanking timber, mowing fields, etc.

If you own any kind of acreage-

, it is pretty much a necessity. In the Midwest, it means you have a driveway that needs to be plowed, or have grass or weeds or brush to be trimmed along the driveway no matter where you live. It means you have to haul dirt around to clean ditches, allow water to drain somewhere different so you need a front end loader.

But no matter where you live, land ownership usually means you have to have gravel spread somewhere in order to maintain or control runoff or give traction in a muddy barnyard or pasture or pathway.

It means you might have a gravel or dirt driveway or barnyard that needs to be maintained. You can't scrape it with a shovel or a pickup or an ATV.

It usually means you will have trees that need to be cut down or trimmed. The limbs have to go somewhere..either a pickup truck or tractor is handy for hauling limbs, brush, branches.

If you have land it means that fences have to be built. A post hole auger is driven by a tractor. As is a brush hog (big ass mower) to cut the brush along that fence row..or a pathway through the woods that you might own (not a DR Mower)

If you have a barn and a horse, it means you need to haul horseshit. If you have sheep or goats, you have to haul away sheep shiat or goat Shiat..

Even though I hire all of my "crop" done by a neighbor farmer, I have a ton of uses for my Kubota with a front end loader. Hell I just pulled an engine out of a little truck 3 weeks ago with the thing!

I have to file a disclaimer here, since I bitch about being broke so often:

1) I have 5 horses, 3 of them are "Foster Horses". They belong to a friend of my wife.
2) Friend of the wife pays for feed for all of our horses to cover boarding expenses.
2a) that includes Hay, Grain
3) Friend of wife pays for hoof care for all 5 horses, vet care for her 3.
4) Friend of wife gave us the tractor.
5) Friend of wife is in her 60s, no pics required.

Anyways, we use the tractor to keep the pastured clipped, move dirt, pull trees, move round bales, etc. I used to pay about 300/year to keep my pastures trimmed. no need for that now.

Oh, and she also paid to fence the back side of the property so we could handle 3 more horses.

But the work load created by having 3 more horses has been HUGE. Our horses have been on the property for 5 years, never had problems. Ive replaced more fence posts in the last 6 months than I had in the last 20 years.

Ditto, horse owner here too.

I don't use the tractor a great deal, but with an auger, loader, roto-tiller and brush hog, when I do use it, it makes short work of things.

I put up our first 2 pastures by hand with rr-ties in the corners and a stud pen with rr-ties throughout. Digging each hole with post hole diggers now seems like torture. Then, I got the tractor and life changed. I've actually trenched water lines with the auger (just knocking out the dirt between holes). The garden is tilled in about 5 minutes. And yes, I repair the tractor once every year or two (but it was built in 58)..

Yea, not so much you whippersnapplers...

yeah, there are a lot of horse owners who do not understand what they are getting themselves into when they buy their first horse. I had a guy here at work that was so excited because he was going to get a "free horse". I told him there was no such thing. Then I described the work, the expenses, etc, and he backed off from the idea.

The friend that gave us her horses is married to a guy who was head of cardiology at the local hospital. They had a nice farm, etc, and then he took a job in another state.

My wife spent 3 months helping the friend pack up her business, and her house. The husband got to his new job, was tired of living out of a hotel (haha, a NICE hotel) and bought a house on the golf course. No longer had space for the horses. So, we became the alternative. But they recognized the position they were putting us in by asking us to take the horses, so as long as the horses are alive, they are paid for. Pretty good deal. My boy now has his own horse.

But we have neighbors who think their horses are fat, but they are so freakishly skinny that we have called animal control on them. We have actually dropped hay off to them anonymously. Some people just dont care, and it sucks.

I have used my sawsall for all that too.

Better than being a youngon