Well life sure has been happening. So much for my goal of posting daily. Oh well. I will try to get everything up to date shortly.

The big news is that I finally got a tractor. Yes, I am now the proud owner of the orange beauty pictured above. The search was a lengthy ordeal and forking over the cash was painful, but man this thing is a beast. It is a Kioti DK40SE, 2012 model with about 850 hours on it. I was prepared to buy a (smaller, less powerful, and more expensive) brand new New Holland at the dealer, but decided to call on this Kioti. It was down at a dealer in Alabama, and priced higher that I thought it was worth, but I could tell they were flexible on price. So my dad and I drove down there to check it out. It had been worked pretty hard, and had a little cosmetic damage, but it ran good. We finalized everything and the salesman said they would bring it up to their Columbia store for free. Unfortunately that ended up taking four days longer than promised. The one down side of this machine is that it is too big for Lexie and my trailer, so I had to get a tow truck to bring it to the farm.

Fortunately once it arrived we got to work! I have put about 15 hours on it so far. I purchased a pair of 42″ pallet forks also, and they have been on the tractor the whole time. I can’t get over how amazing they are. I got a trailer load of free pallets down in Shelbyville a couple of weeks ago, and I have been putting everything on them, and moving them around with ease.

The tractor is very easy to operate, but it will take a little getting used to certain aspects. Primarily the fact that the hydrostatic transmission is controlled by two separate pedals, as opposed to the treadle setup on our old Kubota. The other adjustment will be getting used to so much power! I think that the some scientists from the Russian Olympic program must have visited the Kioti factory. One of my biggest requirements in a tractor was a super powerful loader, and this one delivers. I need to get some sort of weight on the back end in order to keep from lifting the rear tires.

We have had tons of rain recently, so I have made a bit of a mess. Came close to getting stuck a couple of times too. I don’t think the ground is going to dry out any time soon, unfortunately.

One thing that gave me confidence in buying a well used machine is the fact that my new next door neighbor is a diesel mechanic for the county. He offered to help me maintain it. There is a great dealer over in Murfreesboro that has been very helpful. I bought manuals there and appreciated their friendly service. Hopefully I won’t be seeing much of them though!

A big challenge is coming up with a good name. I was going to call the New Holland “Bonnie” and I was considering a Case IH which I would have named “Ruby”. Nothing comes to mind for the KIoti. My friend Tim has been calling her “Big Orange”, but I’m not really into that.

Overall I’m very pleased with my purchase. It is a very capable machine that should help me get a lot of work done. I need to buy some implements for it, most likely a mower and box blade to begin with. First I need to repair the three point hitch. One of the arms is missing. Soon I’ll do a post on all of the little accessories I have bought and plan on buying.