A Few Tractor Thoughts

Right now my dad's 160 acre farm is the home to a Minneapolis Moline M5 (53 HP), a 3 bottom JD plow, a disc, a harrow, a rake, and a pull behind sickle mower. We also use from time-to-time a New Holland baler, a JD drill, and a few other implements. The M5 is a nice tractor and can handle all those implements with no problem ... except it has no three point hitch and no loader.

So, when we were done at the auction and working on the fence we stopped to see a neighbor who will be selling Jinma Tractors soon. Jinma's are Chinese (yuk) 4-wheel drive tractors that are priced much less than the name brand counterparts. You can get a 35 horse tractor brand new for around $10,000 to $12,000. The other nice thing about these compact tractors is that you can get all sorts of implements for them. Some that would be nice to have around the farm would be the box blade, brush cutter, chipper/shredder, log splitter ... and above all ... the LOADER! I don't know how many times we could have used the loader around the farm and as we make a transition to making the farm into a working farm it will become that much more important.

Right now I'm doing as much research as I can and basically checking out the options. Once the neighbor has his up and running (the come in crates and take a little assembly) we are going to do some test drives also. For right now you may find this link about Chinese Compact Tractors interesting. Just click HERE.