Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

As a tractor lover and mechanic, I suggest that if you don't have your own machine shop to stay away from cheap Chinese tractors. I would buy one, but I can make most of the parts on a tractor. Find a neighbor who will rent a tractor to you if possible when you are starting out, or rent one for a couple of days at a time from the local rental company or tractor dealer. Get used to what you will be doing with it. The tractor purchase is just the beginning: you have to have implements, tools, wagons, etc. You need to think of it like you do with buying a car or a machine for a business. Look at the usage, the cost, the payback, the number of hours you will use it per year, what else you might do with the $3000 if you did things by hand or rented one for a day at a time ($100-$200 per day).
On the real need side: how much heavy lifting would you do with it? What kind of things need to be done on your farm that require a tractor? There are small pull-type manure spreaders that you could pull with a pickup or garden tractor, and if you compost the manure, then it can be spread with a broadcast spreader that you push and there would be much less volume to deal with.
If you intend to handle pumpkins or apples or something in pallets, you need something big enough for those things.
I am trying to reduce my use of tractors (pasture instead of haying, no-till wherever I can, mulch mulch mulch).
Unless you don't have any wind where you live, I recommend you put your hoophouse in the ground and don't move it. Treat it more like a greenhouse and set up beds inside. You have to anchor a moveable house, and move the anchors anyway, so if you want to move it, make it light enough to move with your car or truck.

Dan C.
Belgium,WI