Tyler tells his story of how to buy a farm. Tyler recently bought a small farm with a 3 stall barn and house on 2 acres, and he tells us about the house buying process. If you are thinking of buying a small farm or just buying a house with some land, or just want to hear us talk, listen on.
Tyler walks us through his house purchase, and how important it was to hire a good home inspector, and work with a knowledgeable realtor. Tyler's new house is called a flip, meaning it was bought by a developer or contractor at a lower price, perhaps at a foreclosure, and has fixed up the house for resale.
A flip sale may not sound like a good idea, but thinking about it in another way, you've already got someone to do a bunch of the repairs that need doing.
Now being a farmer, Tyler went out and bought a chainsaw, and did the right thing and bought chainsaw chaps and safety gear. Good for him.
The Garden Tractor Dilemma: what to tractor to buy? and what attachments. Eric weighs in on whether to buy a rototiller that attaches to the back of the tractor or to get a standalone rototiller. Eric votes for a stand alone rototiller, the back of tractor rototiller seems like more work.
We move on to storm chasing, as Tyler is CEO of Allison House, the severe weather data company. Rick asks Tyler about the radarscope app , and what is the difference between the different radars available on the app. Tyler and Rick go into probably more detail than the average GF listener wants to know about radar tilts. But if you are into storm chasing, this might be interesting. Tyler uses big words like 'step function improvement' . Let me know.
Alberto
Hi!
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Thanks for all the nice content 😉
Alberto
Andrew Morgan
End of the podcast skips and fast forwards right to the end. About when you guys are talking about weather data gathering.
Love garden fork btw!
Thanks for doing it, Eric.
Matt
Good interview w/ Tyler - always interesting stuff.
Don't want to be "that guy" but I had a few thoughts I wanted to share.
Having both a walk-behind (rear tine) tiller and one that runs off of a PTO on the tractor - I realize Tyler said he doesn't have a PTO on his tractor - I think that unless you're tilling up maybe more than 1/8 of an acre, a walk-behind is definitely the better choice.
If you've got a 3-point hitch (or the equivalent), a simple moldboard plow will do a very good job of turning the soil over and make tilling the ground much easier. Alternatively you could use a potato plow to bust up the soil, but a moldboard plow works really well at breaking up the soil and flipping it over.
Goats are wonderful creatures and quite efficient at clearing land, eating weeds and lots of things other animals will avoid. *If* you can keep them contained - that can be interesting - you could move them about the property and clean it up pretty effectively. But they do require work - trimming feet, etc. and I wouldn't recommend them unless one is willing to put in the work, particularly when the weather stinks.
Back on the subject of tractors. There are many older model tractors which can definitely handle most small farm chores though most of them don't have front-end loaders. A FEL is definitely convenient but not required. One of our tractors has a FEL and the other doesn't. A tractor with a PTO is nice for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you don't have to pull a self-powered unit around (for attachments like a tiller or spreader). I've got a PTO-powered spreader with a large hopper that will spread seed and field amendments nicely. Again, not a necessity for small spaces but convenient.
If one has neighbors that have attachments, that might be an option. Most of the time most attachments are sitting in a building or under a shed roof *not* being used.
Enough rambling by me.
The weather info was cool, Tyler. Enjoyed it!
Matt
steve schuyler
For help on the tractor/implement decisions, visit Tractor By Net, an online tractor Forum.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/
It's the best Tractor Forum I've come across!
Steve