#101 Maybe We Should Have Bought A Different Tractor

hey guys Phil here at woods tree farm thanks for tuning in today if you're new to our channel you should know we are a relatively new Christmas tree farm here in central Virginia we're now in our second year of operation and we're coming up on one year now with this Kubota l-39 oh one tractor we now have one hundred and forty hours on the tractor and my most popular video so far my most viewed video so far is a video number 52 where I shared my top complaints about this tractor and in that video with the complaints I shared mostly minor grievances and inconveniences about the tractor that I had at the time and those things still really hold true I had some issues with the size and the space in the drivers area I still hit my knee on a regular basis on the hazard light switch and I still think it's a pain to reach for the oil dipstick where it's located so just a number of little things and I really don't have anything to add to that complaints list since I did that video and I put another 50 plus hours on the tractor almost 60 hours on the tractor since I did that video so I've got you know a lot more seat time on the tractor and I really don't have any other issues with it aside from what I already shared in video number 52 so the work that we've had to do out of the farm so far and keep in mind we are a new tractor owners we don't have prior to buying this property and prior to starting this business any agriculture experience or very little experience running tractors and other equipment so you know I wasn't 100% sure what we would need I wasn't a hundred percent sure all the questions I should ask when I'm shopping for a tractor and I wasn't a hundred percent sure what we'd be getting into on this property for me to be able to try to judge what size tractor and what capabilities we would need so with all that in mind I can now confidently say that we should have picked a different tractor when we bought one but I'll get into the reasons why here in just a second hey guys thanks for your support on the channel thanks for your likes thanks for your subscribes thanks for watching thanks for your comments it's all great it's been really awesome to see how this channel has grown and all your feedback on their videos has been really helpful we've learned a lot of new things about how to do the work that we're doing out here you know this is all new to us still even though we're in our second year of operation we had no other background leading up to this that helped us figure all this stuff out so your feedback and ideas help a lot if you want to support the channel in another way we've got hats and hoodies for sale on our website so head on over to woods tree farm calm I'll have a link in the description of this video and you can pick up your woods tree farm hat I got a couple different colors and styles available and I got hoodies available as well so appreciate your support we make a tiny bit of money off of that kind of stuff and every bit that we make goes right back into the channel goes right back into the farm currently I'm trying to buy a new 4k camera so help me out from a capability standpoint this tractor has done everything that we've asked it to do early on when we acquired this property we had to do quite a bit of grading we built a road we spread tons and tons maybe hundreds of tons of gravel in stone and we had to do a lot of heavy lifting and at that time I thought this tractor was going to be a little under sized for us but after we got done all of the major construction work what we usually use the tractor for is just general farm chores and this tractor has proved to be more than capable for what we need if we were doing a lot of work in the woods or if we were skidding really heavy logs or if we were doing a lot more heavy lifting like if we had big round bales to move or other things like that I think we would probably want a bigger tractor but we're just not doing that kind of work I don't see us doing that kind of work and frankly if we get into doing anything in the woods I'm probably gonna hire someone or I might look at bringing in some heavier equipment that I rent in order to do that so as far as our needs on a regular basis this size tractor this l-series compact tractor I think meets our needs really well for general farm chores and for doing what we need in order to run a Christmas tree operation okay well I know you guys are impatient and I'm sure some of you guys were like well just get on with it why do you think you need a different tractor so we could get away with a lower powered version of this same tractor Kubota makes the l 2501 and that tractor is considerably less expensive than the l-39 o1 and from what I've seen and what I've read and the videos that I've seen on YouTube it appears to be just as capable as this tractor and there are probably some things that it can't do quite as well particularly with the PTO power but I only have two PTO powered implements I have the rotary cutter and I have the tiller and the little three foot tiller that I have it really doesn't take much horsepower to power that the rotary cutter if I get into something really thick like when I was clearing around my pond that's about the only time that I could think of where I really felt like I was glad I had as much power as I had or in some cases maybe I wish I had slightly more power but that's really a rare exception for the general bush hogging of the fields you know three four foot grass or along the field edges with some of the brush that's around the this size mower did was more than capable it never bog down and I think the L 2501 in most cases would behave just the same way so I think the 2501 series would have served us just fine and the reason I'm making this video and the reason I'm sharing this is because if you're starting a business like we are and every dollar really matters in hindsight I would have much rather save the money it's a few thousand dollars difference I would much rather save the money well actually I would much rather spent the money differently I wouldn't have saved the money for the same price as this tractor I'm pretty sure I haven't priced it officially but I'm pretty sure I could have gotten an L 2501 with a grapple from the dealer financed ready to go for less than the price of this L 3901 so in hindsight if I was to do it over again would have gotten a smaller tractor I would have gotten more implements with the purchase of that tractor so that I could have financed those implements with the purchase now if I want to go back and purchase any additional implements I either need to pay cash or they have different finance terms available for the financing of implements so and those finance terms are not as favorable as the new tractor finance terms so those are my thoughts that's why I feel like we should have bought a different tractor but that's not to say this isn't a good tractor this is a great tractor I'm not getting rid of it I'm just sharing with you my experience and really I think it comes down to two factors one is just our needs and when I bought the tractor I didn't exactly know what our needs were going to be and I didn't know what considerations I should be thinking about so for us I think it was just tough you know I probably rushed into the purchase of the tractor a little quickly but frankly I don't really know how else I would have researched it because I frankly just didn't know what kind of work we would be getting into in this property so there's a lot of things that I couldn't have done without this tractor hear like building the roads and some of the things that I already mentioned so I'm thankful I got it when I got it because I was able to get a lot of work done early in the year this goes back into early last year got a lot of work done with grading and building the roads and all that kind of infrastructure that we needed in order to really get out here and do some good work so I share all this with you just because for our needs and really that's the basis of this is our needs I'm not making a recommendation for you or anyone else watching I'm sharing with you our experience and based on our needs and what I think we need here on a day to day basis I think we could have gotten away with a with a smaller more affordable tractor and I could have purchased with the money that I save some additional implements so that's my story I'm happy to share it with you guys if you have any other questions or thoughts or feedback about my tractor my farm my videos whatever leave those in the comments if you like this video give it a thumbs up and if you haven't already hit the subscribe button as well and you can see more videos of our tractors out here at work on our farm here in central Virginia so that's all for today thanks for watching I appreciate you I'll see you on the next video buh-bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Woods Tree Farm

Views: 48,272

Rating: 4.4904461 out of 5

Keywords: kubota, tractor, kubota l3901, l3901, tractors, farming, christmas tree farm, kubota tractor, buying a tractor, kubota compact tractor, kubota tractors, dont buy a tractor, buy a tractor, kubota l series, kubota l series tractor, kubota l series review

Id: kY73davoP1I

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 18 2020