permaculture

[<darren@permaculture.biz>]

G'day,

I trust that this greets you and all well.

That is an interesting, though I would think unrealistic thought. The lack
of 3PL (three point linkage). I imagine that the draught control on a
machine that would push, as opposed to pull a shank would make it very
difficult to maintain a consistant depth. It takes about 15-30hp per shank
to "pull" a keyline plow. I saw a photo in the PC Activist back in 2000 of a
horse drawn Keyline shank....I would have thought also that for the money
and if you really wanted to keyline/non-inversion plow then you could buy an
old "Johnny" (John Deere) or Fiat 640-650 or something of that ilk - like a
30-40 year old machine for $3-5000 that is still more than capable of doing
this kind of work for a small investment. 

The Fiat 650 in particular is a ripper tractor - about 60hp - no frills,
nice grunt and just works all day. We had one for years that cost about
$8000 (Australian dollars - USD$1 = $AUD1.28) and did thousands of hectares
of keyline pattern plowing and deep ripping (again using the keyline plow)
for tree establishment. We only got rid of it cos we got a great lease deal
on a new Deutz (cab, cd player etc.) - even today the tractor market is
oversupplied and you can get a pretty good deal. On that deal we doubled our
money on the Fiat!!!

Another favorite tractor of mine, that a mate has incidentally just bought,
are the Mercedes Benz MBTrac. These are a bit more expensive as a 2nd hand
machine, but are amazingly capable and more of a hybrid tractor/pick
up/UniMog kinda thing. They have front and rear 3PL/PTO, a neat deck behind
the cab for a spray/spreading unit, high road speed (great for contracting),
and crawler gear for deep ripping hard ground, mulching forestry/orchard
prunings or rotary draining etc. 

 

Yours and Growing,

 

Ciao,

Darren Doherty
www.permaculture.biz

Australia Home: +61 (0) 3 5441 5525
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-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of neshura
Sent: Thursday, 25 January 2007 7:05 AM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] tractors

These are great! I don't need one right now but I'm glad to be able to
bookmark it. Does a walk-behind tractor mean it would be impossible to
rig up a yeomans plow?


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