Our First Horse

It is with great excitement that I introduce the newest addition to our farm - a tractor! If you’re a regular reader, you’ve heard us complain about how much harder a lot of farm jobs are without a tractor. Moving hay, moving manure, keeping the pasture trimmed so the weeds don’t take over, digging holes for fence posts and lots more. I imagine some day soon we’ll begin to wonder what life was like before a tractor. So let’s look at what we got and why:

We’ve been looking at compact tractors for a while. We knew we didn’t need a very big one but even with only about 9 acres we knew we needed something powerful enough to be able to handle the following tractor implements: bush hog, post hole digger (auger), front end loader (FEL), hay spear, box blade/grader and a PTO-driven chipper/shredder. We needed four wheel drive because this property has some elevation and in its current state is full of slick red clay mud. And we wanted something reasonably priced and reliable. After checking with a few friends who are local farmers, we made a shortlist of manufacturers: John Deere, Kubota, Massey Ferguson and New Holland. Not that other manufacturers didn’t make good tractors but the ones on our list had a lot of good reviews from people we knew and all of them have local dealers. That last point is pretty important, as we’ll need parts and service eventually and we’d rather not have to drive to some big city when that happens.

We didn’t really need a brand new tractor. For the size we were looking at (40-50 horsepower), new tractors were running $25k-$35k. So we scoured Craigslist, eBay and regional tractor buyer periodicals. Then it just so happened a friend of ours saw a used Kubota for sale. We made a call, saw it in person, tested and walked away with a fantastic deal on a four-year-old, garage-kept, well-maintained Kubota L5030 with a front-end loader and a heavy duty bush hog. The seller even delivered it.

This all happened in no small part thanks to Mikki’s dad. Her parents moved to Tennessee this fall and her dad in particular has taken a liking to the horses and the small farm. We had planned on saving up and buying one this year but thanks to Mikki’s dad we were able to park this tractor in front of our barn this week. Thanks!!!

So next up we need a hay spear to move round bales. We had been dragging a trailer into the pasture and rolling them off one at a time by hand but we got the trailer stuck once and almost had to leave our truck out there once when the ground was particularly slimy. We’ll need a quick attachment system but for now will get by with a hay spear that secures to the bucket. Suggestions would be appreciated.

Here’s a short video walk-around. You can see the horses checking it out. They’re very curious about the new orange “horse.” I’ll talk a bit more about our first tractor in upcoming posts and have added a category on the menu bar for tractor posts. If you have any suggestions or advice for us, please share!

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Unlike regular TV, I usually don’t fast-forward the commercials when I watch horse shows on RFD-TV . If something relates to or interests me, I’m happy to watch. Horse products interest me. One of those commercials showed a truck driving towards a fence and at the last minute the driver jumped out while the truck headed towards the fence. They had my attention. The fence flexed under the force of the low speed impact and appeared to repel the truck before returning to its previous shape. I know nothing about the horse fence manufacturer Centaur HTP, but that TV commercial really impressed me. If the price is reasonable and I find some good feedback on the Internet, I’ll consider their product.

This version isn’t exactly the same as the one I saw on RFD-TV but it’s similar:

Have you heard anything about Centaur HTP fencing?

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Sure, our horses know which stall to go in at feeding time but we’ve always wanted nice horse stall signs. We’ve thought about having someone make some carved ones but thought it might look too big. Most of the horse accessory catalogs sell engraved ones and those were okay but they always reminded me of baseball trophy engraving and the labels just seemed too small. I wanted something bold and good looking, with impact. Mikki surprised me one day by ordering stall signs from Metal Image Creations (http://www.metalimagecreations.com), a family small business that specializes in custom stall signs and custom display signs (warning signs, company signs and even trophies). The signs she ordered show our horse’s barn names in bold, along with their fancy pedigree names underneath (I keep forgetting the fancy names so this comes in handy). The text appears to be lasered onto aluminum, the edges are rounded and there are two small holes on the top for mounting. I love these stall signs! I put them up about three months ago and they look as good today as they did when I first unwrapped them. The price was right, too. Only $19 each. I’m amazed at the high quality lettering and the info sheet that came with the stall signs indicates the lettering “is so tough that an image cannot be removed by erasure, and even resists abrasives such as steel wool, extreme temperatures, fungus, and most corrosive atmospheres.” I hope out stall signs aren’t exposed to most of those things but I did try to scratch the lettering with my fingernail with no luck.

I meant to write about these months ago and even took some nice pictures but I can’t find them at the moment. Below is a photo I took of Moonshine a few weeks back with some reindeer antlers we bought for future Christmas pictures. Yeah, she’s REALLY dirty in this picture but at least you can see the cool sign. We have one for each horse and no doubt you’ll see them in upcoming photos.

Metal Image Creations didn’t pay us anything for this review. We just like this product so much, we wanted to pass on the info:

Mark and Lisa Peters
Metal Image Creations
http://www.metalimagecreations.com/
Phone: 660-890-4820

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