when one of our cows die last week i realized we were screwed without a tractor. good luck moving an 800 pound bull with a shovel and a buddy.
to bury the cow, our friends (+ beef provider) at LJL Ranch saved the day, bringing over a backhoe and burying the cow where it lay. but i don't want to bother them for future burials.
i'd also like to do a lot more than hide dead bodies on the ranch, although that was certainly one of the reasons we moved here. so we went to a Kubota dealership and picked out this beast:
Kubota LA3902 being delivered to our barn 2 days later
the thing about tractors is, their utility is a function of attachments. so to kick us off i got the hay bale spear ($650), a pallet fork ($750), and of course the front loader bucket ($5,400).
pallet fork (above) and hay bale spear (below) on our new trailer
the 39 horsepower tractor itself was another $23,200, and a 20 foot trailer to move it (+ other tools we own) was $3,000. all financed @ 0% interest of course!
within an hour of delivery we bought a 2" hitch for my truck, moved the trailer to one of our undeveloped areas of the property, and i got to organizing the attachments.
my first tractor task was moving a half bale of hay -- which i've been manually pitch-forking by hand for over a month on a daily basis -- to a covering where our animals are hanging out.
bales of hay can weigh 1,000+ pounds!
then i parked it behind our house. todo: build a tractor garage.
temporary tractor parking
after i get the hang of it, my next two tractor projects:
1. clear the area in our soon-to-be shooting range
2. build a 4th hay barn in one of the empty pastures
oh and we also needed these accessories. hydraulic oil for the front loader bucket ($39), a grease gun for keeping miscellaneous pivot points well lubricated ($22), diesel engine oil ($21), and a backup gas tank ($39).
