The property only has about 2 acres that are completely cleared. The rest is wooded, or covered in thick blackberry brambles. Our philosophy at Sweet Bee Orchard is to work with nature, not against it, so this is OK with us. However, to get started, we still needed a tractor.
Tractors run a long time. If you’re willing to do some maintenance, you can get a 30 year old tractor for half the cost of a new one. We looked at one, but decided that we didn’t want to have to spend the time and effort to keep it running. Next, we looked at gently used tractors. These were like new, with only a few hundred hours of use. Unlike cars, tractors don’t lose much value over the first few years. We could save maybe 10% on a nice, used tractor.
That’s not much savings, especially when there are a lot of deals out there for new tractors. We centered in on Massey Ferguson and Kubota sub-compacts, with a front loader and a 4 foot cutter. Sub-compacts are meant for the small, hobby farm, and it fit our budget. We spent a lot of time with Parker over at Crewe Tractor, and he was able to get us a good deal on the Massey Ferguson GC1715, with a cutter. It’s got 25hp, and so far has been able to handle everything we’ve thrown at it.
The first order of business is to clear out some of the blackberry brambles. There’s about an acre and a half of thick, 8 foot high blackberries at the front of the property. We want to partially clear that out so we can plant other berries, and also pick the wild blackberries that are already there. We’ll need help with the picking, so stay tuned for more info on that.
Here’s a video of the tractor being delivered, and all of us taking our first couple of turns on it. Jaron loved it, and he decided to tackle the blackberries. You can see him getting started at about the 1:12 mark.