today could be the day
i decide to get a tractor i'm gonna go check on the chickens in the greenhouse while i'll tell
you what i'm talking about i've wanted a tractor for quite some time in fact probably since the day
i started homesteading the reason i don't have one though is the cost tractors are about the
same or in some cases more expensive than buying a car i'm not keen on debt the only debt i have
is the mortgage on my place i don't have any other payments and i'd really like to keep it that way
so financing a tractor wasn't really an option for me especially because i don't have a farm
business i'm not making a full-time living off of the homestead so it didn't seem like a really good
investment it's even more like a liability to have that monthly tractor payment so over the
years i've often scoured craigslist looking for used tractors but i've found that they are often
almost expensive as the new ones you're kind of taking a risk though getting the used tractors
because one there's no warranty and two you don't really know what you're getting you don't know if
you're inheriting someone else's problem none of them were cheap enough to where i could pay cash
they're all really expensive still without the option to finance because you're just
buying from a person i decided just to make do with what i have here make the best of it
yeah there's some major limitations but it is what it is but things might be changing now
i bet you girls are happy to be in the greenhouse today
it is a blustery snow sleety kind of day someone asked if the greenhouse stays warm enough to keep
the water from freezing during the day when the sun's out it's generally about five to ten
degrees warmer in here than it is outside and no wind chill of course at night time it gets about
as cold in here as it is out there and again of course no wind chill so that water does freeze
i needed a new water warmer thing this year but premiere one sold out right now
i am on my way over to see tess everyone's favorite shepherd us
because tess has an old tractor that she's looking to sell if you saw episode 2
of my documentary series discovering home which is on abundance plus then you soon test drive this
beautiful fancy mahindra tractor because she has that tractor she doesn't need her old one anymore
that she's had since the 90s so she called me recently and gave me a really good offer
to buy her tractor this is not a new tractor this is a 1986 john deere 750 tractor so i'm coming
down here to test drive it today and see what i think about and aside is this the tractor for me
good morning tess how are you good are you gonna write up there sure such an outpouring of um
of comments and from contacts and stuff like that you know i mean i thought i
didn't even anticipate that in the least i mean i had no idea i'd meet so many people
but one of the other things that is kind of interesting to me is so many people have said
oh i want to come and stay with you and and learn everything you know and so forth so there's such
a big demand tess is talking about since we released episode two of discovering home on
abundance plus and then also justin put it on youtube for everyone to see and that outpouring
is so many people want to learn so i'm sort of thinking about well how can i do that because
one-on-one i mean there aren't enough days in the calendar you know right and and how to organize
that all and i thought well if i organize that into maybe six or eight workshops i don't have
accommodations but i could do like one day workshop maybe start at 10 end at two or three
so that people could have a chance to get the seasonal hands-on activity and it would be like
a workshop about that topic all right so there you have it tess is thinking about hosting um
quarterly or yeah like maybe five or six times a year i don't know workshop so if you're interested
leave a comment down below and and let us know if you'd be interested in coming out to north idaho
to get some hands-on experience in one of the sheep workshops with tess leave a comment below
yeah so this is the tractor all right and this has been our good little tractor for also all of our
years here and now we we went to the big guy here and um and so ralph was going to um we either keep
it or sell it off really well because these sizes are in demand because they're they're good enough
to do everything you need to do but they're not so big that you can't do them on a small place right
more people are interested in small place tractors and stuff so i said well wait before you do that
i have a better idea i think i think i know who needs to have this tractor yes so
i've been to your place and i realized that you really could use a tractor for all kinds of things
whether it's lifting up pigs to slaughter or brush hogging or whatever yeah the front
end loader is going to be so helpful for you you won't even imagine all the things you can do it's
and it has the pto in the back you can use all kinds of different attachments you just
have to make sure the attachment is appropriately sized for it you know so you say you know don't
a nine thousand whatever versus a 750 you know you have to make sure about that i did talk to rolf on
the phone that's tess's husband so i do know a little bit about the tractor it was it's a 1986
manual transition diesel 20 horsepower four-wheel drive like tess said the big things i would love
to have a tractor for is one harvest time so i could move 350 pound hog much more easily than i
did this year to the brush hot getting a brush hog and mowing down the epic proportions of tansy and
bracken fern i have on my property and of course the bucket loader i have wood chips that i could
easily move with this of course this is what i would use to move the hog as well and if i got
forks for it i could take a pallet of say chicken feed or hog feed out of the back of my truck or
off of a truck if it's being delivered this loader is rated i think for about 750 pounds so i would
only be able to do like a quarter ton at a time instead of a half ton or a full time but that's
still way better in regards to getting bulk feed than i'm situated for now diesels are great for
equipment but they don't like starting in the cold because it doesn't have a spark it just ignites by
compression and heat so once we have temperatures like this i just plug it in and basically this
is just an immersion heater in the water jacket somewhere i think it's over yet on that side um
basically just heats up the water jacket so that when you come to start it even the coldest day
jumps right up so i'm i'm a great believer of plugging diesels in once it gets cold and it's got
three and a half thousand powers on it which is nothing absolutely nothing 1986
yeah this engine just reaching its prime so you got eight speeds forward everything from
you know granny creeping to going down the road this controls the bucket of the front
test didn't want to get into the specifics of the asking price on the video but i'll just say this
doing some research online looking to see what these tractors go for i've seen several
john deere 750s with the front bucket and four wheel drive for anywhere between ten to fourteen
thousand dollars and on the low end i've seen it without the front end loader and no four-wheel
drive such as two-wheel drive for around five thousand dollars tess's asking price is on the
low end of that scale so it's a really good deal as far as what other people are selling them for
and this includes tire chains and the chains alone are worth about eight hundred dollars so what do
you guys think is this a good deal should i get the tractor leave a comment down below i'd love
to get your opinion on it i really enjoyed driving it getting to use it a little bit it's not fancy
no automatic transmission hydrostatic nothing like that no power steering none of the fancy
modern features but it'll get the job done so yay or nay let me know in the comments