#Hobby farm tractors full size
#Hobby farm tractors full

Doing these tasks with traditional lawn & garden equipment means having a separate engine for EACH piece of equipment.” And you’re going to have a need to transport material around like hauling rocks, wood or compost. If you want to maintain the land in something other than a wild primal state, you need some kind of mower or bush hog, a chipper to clean up branches, a sickle bar if you’re going to do hay. If you are going to garden, you need a tiller or soil working device. If you are on a rural piece of property, you have different things that need doing. He goes on to say, “The beauty of a walk-behind tractor is that it is a small compact power unit that has ONE engine. “It’s staggering what you can do with a walk-behind tractor from tilling, to mowing to snow removal to baling hay with a hay rake and hay baling package.” One of the primary strengths is there are over 50 implements available, allowing the user to perform all kinds of chores.

#Hobby farm tractors full

There are strengths and weaknesses in comparing a full sized farm tractor to a walk-behind tractor.

#Hobby farm tractors full size

It has the same functionality as a full size farm tractor, with the exception of operating a front-loader and a few other tasks.” The walk-behind tractor is the same thing it has to have implements on it to make it useful. What can a farm tractor do? A farm tractor is 100% useless on its own, it has to have an implement attached to it to make it useful, otherwise you drive it around the field and do nothing. What Makes a Walk-Behind Tractor a Tractor?ĭufour says, “A walk-behind tractor by definition is something that runs different implements, just like a farm tractor runs different implements.

The most notable market gardeners in this space promoting their use is Elliot Coleman, author of the New Organic Grower (1989) and more recently Jean-Martin Fortier, author of The Market Gardener and television personality whom we spoke with a couple years back. Much of today’s renewed popularity of these tractors is attributed to the locally-grown, slow-food movement. You only had to work half the time eliminating the need to grow and harvest hay to get your animal through the winter.” They said that using a walk-behind tractor is just as good as using hoof-stock to plow your fields, only you would not have to feed it. “Europeans said we need to restructure but in their mind the agricultural system didn’t need to change, it only needed to modernize. The shift turned to buying your food at the supermarket because it was produced where it is cheaper, rather than grow it yourself or buy at the local market.”įortunately, the walk-behind tractor didn’t experience the same downturn in Europe, where the tradition is still going strong today. Suburbs began where prime farmland surrounding the cities was and it turned into sprawled out grid style housing. After World War II, the USDA changed their focus and said get big or get out.

Then, the walk-behind tractor experienced a downturn in the US.Īccording to Dufour, “The 1950s was their heyday. They were quickly adopted in America and Europe after World War II. The concept of the walk-behind tractors is not a new one. Earth Tools also sells a wide variety of high quality European hand tools for the farming/market garden industry. He has spent the last 40 years using, selling and repairing a couple of the most sought-after Italian brands of walk-behind tractors in North America and beyond. To get a better understanding of walk-behind tractors and their many applications we talked to founder and owner of Earth Tools in Kentucky, Joel Dufour. The great news is there is a robust and affordable option in walk-behind tractors for small acreage. Whether you want to become more self-reliant by growing your own food, have ambitious plans for a homestead or you want to have a market garden and take a shot at a second career, a tractor can make the job easier and can save you tons of bodily wear and tear.īut, if you have only a few acres (or only plan to cultivate a few acres), investing in a tractor may seem too costly-in terms of money, time and maintenance. To learn more, we talked one of the nation's leading experts in walk-behind tractors, Earth Tools' founder, Joel Dufour, about how they work and what types of properties they're best suited for. Walk behind tractors have been a small-farm equipment staple in Europe for decades and are becoming popular in the United States.