Buying advice for 5 acres

Hello everyone-
This is my first post and I am looking for some advice. I built a home on about 5.5 acres a little over a year ago. I built my house on top of a hill which leads to some great views but step hills. The ground at my location ranges from packed sand which has never been disturbed so it almost appears as dirt to almost beach like sand. In these place even my push mower just sinks. I am putting in about 15,000sq ft of grass in the next couple weeks. The rest is native broam and where the ground has been disturbed weeds, sticker plants, and a lot of sun flowers.

I would like to buy one thing to take care of my mowing. I don't have a separate building yet so I don't really want to store a riding mower for my yard and a small tractor for the rest of the area. Also I don't know anything about taking care of a old tractor. So while people tell me to keep my eye out for like a Ford 8n I wouldn't know the first thing about it.

I would like to get a John Deere X728 but I really can't justify the cost just for cutting grass!!! I work with a guy who owns a small business that sells EXMARK. He sold another guy I work with a $9000 mower for around $6000 I guess. So that is an option. But I don't know how a ZTR work on the hills and the soft sand.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!

IMO - If you still have landscaping, fencing, driveway, building work to do I'd be opting for a low houred second hand compact tractor, say a Kubota 4wd diesel fitted with turf tyres in the c.18hp -24hp range with Cat 1 linkage & PTO - I'd think you'd pick a good unit up in the US for c.$7500, maybe less if you negotiate hard.

It'll comfortably run a 48"+ finishing mower (mid or rear mounted) + a 36" bush hog to keep the rougher areas in check, & provide the versatility to dig post holes, fit a blade for levelling the driveway or a pad for the shed build or a tennis court, fetch firewood, snow blowing (as I recall from my time in the US, Nebraska gets small pretty deep snow falls) & still be plentyy nimble enough to handle the mowing - & if you are going down this path see if you can stretch to 1 fitted with a front end loader.

Maintaining tractors like these isn't difficult & is a acquired skill you'll probably enjoy, as for ancient full size tractors, inexperienced operators & steep country is a real dangerous mix (& they're a far too big to be aregularly used tool on 5acres )

One thing you will experience in sandy country no matter what you purchase is advanced blade & possibly deck wear as your equipment will be "sand blasted" by centrifugal forces every time you mow (so for safety inspect the blades regularly for wear/fatigue/fractures).

Also steeper country will also take its toll on many of the lighter duty hydro transmissions found in both ZTR & tractor/bonneted style Ride On Mowers (personally for lawn care, I only run tractor type mowers & compact tractors because of added versatility & stability on my undulating terrain).
Good luck & let's know what you end up purchasing & how it performs.

Thanks for your input. I should have mentioned my driveway has already been put in (about 200ft crushed concrete) and all my landscaping will be contracted out this time around. So I really just need a mower and maybe something for snow removal.

I started out looking at compact tractors JD's 2XXX/3XXX series and the Kubotas. But since I'm not planning on doing landscaping work with it I was instructed these would be overkill and hard on the lawn.

Hmm, if they're not required for landscaping a compact tractor will be hard to justify.

The challenge is steep undualtions which is going to tax/wear most ride on's dragging the combined weight up & down + you'll need something fairly stable/agile + reasonably quick to maintain 5acres on regular basis - suggest you may want to post a few photo's & advise grade steepness 1in8 ? or more ? Advise if you going to regularly mow the whole 5.5acres? Which might prompt some more ideas/input.

Don't know if you have anything similar available in the 'States, but maybe something (albeit larger) may suit along the lines of the pictured Aussie built Deutscher's I use on really steep grades (c .12hp 36" cut rugged simple mowers belt driven direct gear drive transaxles with dual rear wheels/low centre of gravity making them very stable on steep lawn/hillsides) - the downside is they're too slow for my liking to mow much more than an acre.

Consider also how much time do you wish to spend mowing, a 48" deck mowing at an average of 4.5mph (most ZTR's will be quoted at max c.9mph+ but by the time you factor in lining up runs,reversing, slower speeds around trees/obstacles/fencelines..etc 4.5mph is closer to a realistic average) will take c.0.5hr to mow 1acre.

IMO test drive or even hire the mowers you're considering purchasing for few hours cutting on your block to determine if they're up to the job, better still get a contractor to do the job a few times to see what they use/how it performs prior to parting with your $$$$ - as very rough rules of thumb, get something in slightly larger HP than you think you'll need (the hills will sap power), & if you wouldn't comfortably drive a 2WD vehicle in the terrain, I wouldn't advocate using a ZTR.....

I will take some picks today sometime. As far as frequency of mowing I would be mowing the lawn at least once a week. Everything else would depend on what the mower would knock down without issues.Rain fall also has an affect. I have only had to mow the broam twice this summer. Weeds and sunflowers have been a monthly chore. I have been having to keep all this knocked down with my torro push mower this summer. So anything will be easier than that. If I was able to keep everything mowed in 2 to 4 hours I would be happy. I wouldn't want to mow the pasture more than once a month if possible. Everyone out here is mostly going to have big tractors with shredders from their farm operations. Last year my great unle paid the farmer who rents his field to do it for me once. This year I haven't talked to anyone interested.

First pick is east of house showing dirt work that has been done for new yard.
2nd is behind my house looking north. The draw with the 2 hills on either side is my property. In between where you see all the sunflowers is where my geothermal dumps. I went down there and some of the mary-j plants are at least 8 ft high. The hill going down is what I worry the most about.
3rd pick is at the bottom of the hill looking towards the house.
4th is just showing what will be the backyard area
5th is my finger and looking southeast from the top of my driveway. You can see what I mowed and where I gave up...
6th is looking from the southwest at the hill in front of my house
7th is the front of my house from across the road showing the front hill and my dog
8th is on the west side of the house looking north.
Thanks for taking a look!!!

nrbocke said:

Hello everyone-
This is my first post and I am looking for some advice. I built a home on about 5.5 acres a little over a year ago. I built my house on top of a hill which leads to some great views but step hills. The ground at my location ranges from packed sand which has never been disturbed so it almost appears as dirt to almost beach like sand. In these place even my push mower just sinks. I am putting in about 15,000sq ft of grass in the next couple weeks. The rest is native broam and where the ground has been disturbed weeds, sticker plants, and a lot of sun flowers.

I would like to buy one thing to take care of my mowing. I don't have a separate building yet so I don't really want to store a riding mower for my yard and a small tractor for the rest of the area. Also I don't know anything about taking care of a old tractor. So while people tell me to keep my eye out for like a Ford 8n I wouldn't know the first thing about it.

I would like to get a John Deere X728 but I really can't justify the cost just for cutting grass!!! I work with a guy who owns a small business that sells EXMARK. He sold another guy I work with a $9000 mower for around $6000 I guess. So that is an option. But I don't know how a ZTR work on the hills and the soft sand.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!

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Since you are not educated about old tractors, what ever you do, do not let someone dump an old tractor on you that needs repairs. And believe me the most do need repairs and the ones that don't immediately will need repairs soon. There are dozens of people around just waiting for an unsuspecting fellow like you. It could be a relative, an acquaintance, a supposedly good friend or a friend of a friend of a distant relative. You get the picture I'm sure.

You have a difficult problem with the soil type as you already understand and your next problem will be soil errosion because of sparse cover if the drought ever ends. For starters I would check with the locals to see if wheat would grow on the non lawn areas and planted with the hill contour . My experience with that type of soil 2 things are needed. 46-0-0 fertilizer and water. Lots of both.

As you suspect the ZTR is not an option in my estimation. A permiter fence and a couple of donkeys or sheep might be the answer for the 4.5 non lawn acres. Coyotes like sheep but not donkeys so now we're narrowing down the options even more. :biggrin:

This seems to me a long term investment you've made with a very nice house but I have seen time and time again good intentions for mowing 5 acres and after a couple of years it becomes an unwanted liability. Personally I'd be looking at the option of mowing the acre with a nice lawn tractor ( with differential lock possibly if you ever consider pushing snow ) and dealing with the other rough ground some other way.

Those are my thoughts for the moment but they are subject to change in a flash. :laughing:

I already know all about erosion! Last summer was about the opposite of this one. My leach field is at the end of the pack yard area. I had rutts at least 3 ft deep all over the place actually exposeing it. I had it covered 3 times that summer. Last guy did his best to terrace it. I had dry wells installed for the down spots and put in bio waddles on the back hill. I had a guy sow annual rye last year but the rain washed a lot of it out. My landscaper said they could drill brome for me late this fall. They are tilling in black dirt before hydro seeding the lawn.