Our new tractor – Johnny!

With mowing season ramping up this spring, and with Ben and I only having push mowers for our 4.5 acres of grass, we began our quest for a larger mowing machine! As with anything we do, the process of deciding on the best possible option was filled with many spreadsheets, nights of YouTubing, and research. Let’s look at all the options we looked at and introduce you to our new beast, Johnny 🙂

Our Quest: Determine the best possible option of mowing machine that is:

• Capable of handling our approximately 4.5 acres of grass
• Able to be used on steep slope/incline in the area down to our creek
• Multipurpose and its usefulness goes beyond just mowing (snow plow, farming etc)
• Affordable (if that’s even possible haha)

We had asked the previous owners of the property what they used to mow and they said a zero turn mower and that the task took about 4 hours. That was one thing I neglected to mention when talking about the house we bought, we had both heard of horror stories with “for sale by owner” houses, it was super nice to actually be able to directly ask the owner of the property you’re interested in random house questions. We chatted with them for multiple hours when we were considering the house and it was very clear to both parties the passion a desire for them to see the property go back to being a farm and for us to have a property that was actually capable and zoned for farming 🙂

But also, FOUR HOURS of mowing.

Three major factors (and a fourth factor that’s harder to measure) come into play when determining how long it will take to mow a property: width of the mower, size of the property, and speed of the mower. The key issue is that these calculators are factoring you mowing at max speed on a flat, even surface – which isn’t very realistic. The fourth factor to come into play with things like trees, rocks, and other obstacles which require you to slow down and navigate around them. Nevertheless, it gives us something to start with.

What was interesting is that the width of most mowers range from 42 to 72 inches, each jump up adds a substantial amount of cost without really saving you much in terms of time. For example a 42 to 46 mower deck increase costs you about $500 more, yet only saves you ~17 minutes of mowing time. Jumping from 42 to 56 costs you just over $1000, and saves you 30 minutes of mowing time. The time savings add up, in Iowa you can expect to mow 4-5 months of the year, and at once a week of mowing, at the end of the season you’ve saved yourself between 8-10 hours of mowing time with that $1000 upgrade. So it’s all about how much upfront you want to pay to offset the time you spend cooking in the sun mowing.

We decided to opt for a larger 60 inch mower and accept the larger upfront cost with a slight decrease in maneuverability. On thing we didn’t think to account for is that a larger deck struggles more with uneven terrain. You need a flat 60 inches or you risk scalping the ground in the high spots. Our ground for the most part isn’t that flat or smooth, so there was definitely a learning curve in how high you needed to cut the grass to avoid scalping while also not having to mow every other day.

Next up was type of tractor.

• There are Zero-Turns, designed for speed and maneuverability. They mow and they mow VERY well.

• There are Lawn or Garden tractors, designed for small lightweight work. They might be able to tow a small cart or push a small snow plow. But primary focus on mowing.

• There’s Sub-Compact Tractors. These are small tractors with a LOT of power. They have at least one PTO (Power Take Off). They can handle many types of attachments like loaders, backhoes, snow blowers/plows, balers, etc.

We intend to farm, likely livestock and garden as well. To us the sub-compact tractor just made sense. It provided us a strong, multipurpose machine capable of assisting us with a great deal many projects and adventures around the property. Plus the price point is comparable, given the added functionality, to buying each tool separately.

Lastly, color was all that left 😉 I kid, but seriously there are a lot of crazy people that have VERY strong feelings about the color brand of tractor you get. In the few weeks following our purchase, it was surprising how many folks’s next question, after learning we bought a tractor, was “what color is it?” Not brand. Color.

Our options for color brands for the size we were looking at were Orange Kubota or Green John Deere. The other two contenders for slightly larger tractors than we were considering were Versatile and Case, both of whom make a red tractor so I have no idea how color-bias works with them haha. The joke with the John Deere tractors is that the price point was higher because of their fancy green paint. But honestly the price difference between two similarly spec’d Kubota and John Deere wasn’t that significant.

Well, now that we picked out our 60 inch, 1025R Sub Compact John Deere – It’s time to accessorize. This tractor comes with a rear, category one rear PTO. This determines the size of attachments you can connect, and the amount of power this tractor can provide. It is the smallest of PTOs, which does limit us, but in looking through ALL the attachments offered, we didn’t find any category 2 items which we couldn’t live without. And the $8000 difference was enough to make that decision final.

We chatted with our local John Deere dealer and they had an awesome deal going on where you could get $500 off the purchase of a new tractor AND a free front-end loader (~$5k!). So we ended up getting the following attachments:

• Front Loader
• Belly Mower (60 inch)
• Post Hole Digger
• 40 gallon Sprayer (purchased later for murdering mosquitoes)

So without further ado here’s our new Johnny. So far he’s at nearly 40 hours of hard work. He’s been helping us with weekly mowing, helped us dig out the chicken run and has helped us spray our yard for mosquitoes 🙂 All in all, a sound purchase.

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