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James,
I just wanted to respond to the recent article on small tractors. In 1981 my wife and I bought 12 acres and started market gardening, selling produce locally. I grew about 3 acres of produce each year and put up hay for animals. Our first big investment at the time was a BCS 725 machine with the tiller and sickle-bar mower attachments. We used that machine, and used it hard.

Today it’s 2009 and I just finished cutting hay and putting in my green bean patch, using that 725. It’s still on the original engine, which has never been rebuilt, only annual oil changes for the last 27 years. It no longer starts on the first pull, these days it starts on the second pull each time, but guess I can’t complain too loud about that.

In my life I must admit I’ve made very few incredibly good investments, but that Model 725 is definitely one of them. It’s saved me untold labor and has just simply worked for 27 years without a bit of trouble. It’s like an old Ford 8N, it just keeps running and doing what it’s supposed to do. Old farm equipment was made to last forever, the BCS machines are farm equipment, not cheap consumer toys. The price reflects it, but from my opinion they’re a bargain in the long run. Highly recommended. – Bobalu

Hello Mr. Rawles,
Regarding the recent letters on micro-farm tractors, I have another viewpoint for your consideration.

In addition to the Troy-Bilt Horse rear tine tiller and other tools scaled for 1-2 acres, I have also purchased a larger farm tractor to better suit the conditions in and around my retreat. The recent letter mentioned Ford 9Ns and Farmalls. While these are still very common and many 9Ns are still in service, they are of 1940s-1950s vintage. My personal choice was a Massey Ferguson 100 series diesel tractor (135 or 165, for example). These were built between the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and have decades of excellent service history with much information available online (for you to save on paper now).

There were several factors leading me to this decision:

I obtained the tractor from a seller on Craigslist for a bargain price. This allowed me to retain a budget for maintenance rather than blowing it all up front on a new machine. While the peripheral systems needed attention, the engine and transmission were rock solid. The Perkins Diesel engines are renowned for reliability and durability. My updates and repairs serve two purposes: Restoring the mechanical soundness of the machine and its systems, and forcing me to become familiar with the repair and upkeep now. This is a mechanical restoration only – it needs to work, not look good. Surprisingly, every part that my 40 year old tractor has needed was both in stock and relatively inexpensive. While it’s comforting to “gear up”, eventually you will have to repair what you buy. Two years after TSHTF is not the ideal time to start the learning curve on your life-sustaining equipment. An old tractor you have mechanically zero-timed before the world comes to grief will give years of reliable service, and you will have the experience of your earlier work to guide future repairs.

While a larger tractor is overkill for a few acres, it is compatible with most all the equipment on surrounding farms. 1960s and 1970s tractors will have modern 3-point hitches with the ability to add additional hydraulics. The Massey-Ferguson 165, at 53 horsepower, can run a myriad of equipment that might overtax a smaller tractor. In addition to your own needs, you will have the option of volunteering to help your neighbor prepare his field or bring in his crop, using your extra muscle and standard 3-point hookups. That would be a Grade-A trade for food, fuel, or assistance when you need it, as opposed to showing up with a shovel and asking “what can I do to help?”

A larger tractor will also turn and disk your two acres in a hurry! I have collected smaller 3 point hitch equipment, like a two-bottom moldboard turning plow and a disk harrow, very inexpensively. The equipment is old, but made of such heavy steel that it still has decades of life left in it. Another barter option is to quickly prepare ground for other small-scale neighbors that may have purchased less durable equipment. Attempting to till up hard, fallow ground, even with a rear-tine tiller, is tough on the equipment and the person. Your tractor with plow and harrow would make short work of that fallow ground, allowing the rear-tine tiller to finish much more quickly and without the mechanical abuse.

The other posts mentioned diesel-engined ATVs. I respectfully submit that this may be a case of can rather than should. While you can pull a disk or maybe even a small all-purpose plow, the machine simply does not have the tractor-like durability to stake your family’s future on using the ATV as a tractor long-term. By the time you have bought a rare diesel ATV with ATV-specific implements, you might as well have bought an older, real tractor with standard 3-point implements for the money. Remember, from a duty cycle perspective (if I may anthropomorphize), I’d want my tractor to think: “wow, that was only two acres” as opposed to the ATV thinking: “Wow, that was two acres!”

On the issue of noise, I agree that a stock machine can be heard a ways off. However, the noise can be significantly reduced by using non-standard exhausts. If your goal is to prevent advertisement of your activity, it is time well spent to install a series of mufflers which will deaden the roar of a working engine. That slight drop in horsepower might be worth the relative quiet. This is true of your rear tine tiller as well as any other equipment. As an example, I have an old Onan generator with a high volume double muffler that some guys at a muffler shop helped me rig up. I can stand right next to the thing while it’s running, and carry on a conversation with only slightly raised voices.

Thank you for your efforts, Mr. Rawles! – J.I.C.

When I saw the Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) mentioned in SurvivalBlog, I couldn’t help but notice how similar it was to the rigs used by a lot of farmers in Thailand (and I would assume a lot of other places in Asia). When traveling around Thailand I couldn’t help but notice what appeared to be effectively motorized donkeys. Men had them rigged to trailers.

A little research showed that they are known as “Walking Tractors”, are made all over the planet, the and serve the same function as the BUV. One thing that I like about the idea of using them is their interchangeability of parts. Assuming your trailer gets hit by a truck, your tractor is still good. If your tractor is breaks down, you attach your trailer to a mule.You can hook up, plows, trailers, tillers, and every other sort of thing you may find useful on a tractor

Some Images of Walking Tractors:

There is one in here that has a nice image of some guys hauling logs using them

Clear image of a trailer for Walking Tractors

Regards, – Jeff C.

JWR Replies: These next two items were first posted in the early days of SurvivalBlog (circa October, 2005) regarding rear-tine tiller/tractors and ATVs:

The Micro-Farm Tractor, by “Fanderal”

My goal, like so many of us, is to be able to pre-bugout, to a retreat I can live on full time. I dream of having a few acres out in the country where I can mostly support myself on what can be produced on my own land. When I first started to think about it, and plan for it, the first question of course is “How much land?” After getting past the obvious answer, “As much as possible”, came the more reasonable answer of: “enough to do accomplish my primary goal of optimal self-sufficiency.” After more study I came to realize that five or so acres is about all I could really work. Five acres, when worked intensively, will produce far more than a family of four can consume. This five acres would contain everything, House, Barn, a one to two acre garden, chickens, Rabbits, Goats, et cetera.

So having settled on five to seven acres, I turned to the issue of what tools, equipment, and other assets would be needed to make my micro-farm work. Beyond the usual hand tools. And shop tools, my research led me to study power equipment appropriate for the Micro-Farm. What I found was the Two-Wheel, or “Walk-behind” Tractor. A good example of the class is the BCS 852 with a 10 horsepower diesel engine. It has a single cylinder engine mounted in front of a trans axle. The Trans axle drives a pair of wheels that are from 3.5 to 6.5 inches wide, and 8 to 12 inches in diameter. It is also equipped with front and rear Power Takeoffs (PTOs) used to transfer power to a variety of implements. For me this is the optimum retreat utility tractor. To justify that statement I need to go into a bit more detail as to why. As with all things, this selection is based on my plans and intentions, but I believe that they are generic enough to qualify as a general solution for most people, but as always Your Mileage may Vary (YMMV).

The factors I am taking into consideration are:

Size of Farm.
Number of people available to work it.
Safety
Maintainability
Fuel availability/economy
Life expectancy under the projected load

The truth is most of us have not, or will not be able to acquire more than five to 10 acres of land. If you can get more, fine, get it; you can’t have too much land, but you can leave yourself short on other things by buying more land than you really need, or can work.
In most cases the garden will be run by just one or two people, either because of off farm employment or the kids may be grown and gone before you make the move. People that are already doing this will tell you that one to two acres, if worked as intensively as is reasonably possible is all one person can handle. If you have more land, then you have the option of bartering produce, for labor to work more acres. But I would still keep it in two-acre units.
The core concept of survivalism/preparedness is independence; you can’t be independent if you can’t do most, if not all the maintenance yourself. While yes, most anyone with any mechanical aptitude at all can work on most regular tractors, however they have four times as many cylinders, fuel injectors, and fuel lines, twice as many tires, use much more fuel, and mostly are too much tool for two to five acres.

When the world ends there will be no more fuel deliveries from anywhere, and if there are then they will be prohibitively expensive. So you need a fuel that you can produce yourself, to me this means biodiesel. It’s a fuel you can make yourself; it will substitute directly into the tank with no modifications to the engine, and gives almost exactly the same performance, as regular diesel.

So with these concepts in mind I started thinking about what the ideal tool would be. I eliminated most regular four wheeled tractors like the Ford 9N and the International Harvester (IH) Farmalls because to buy one of their modern counterparts new is very expensive, and to find parts for older ones that you can buy on the cheap can also be expensive. While there has been a lot of development in compact and subcompact tractors in the last few years, they are mostly compact technical wonders that have all kinds of computerized fuel injection systems, high volume, high pressure hydraulics, and just lots and lots of things that need to be maintained or fixed. Simplicity is crucial.
My search for information about small farm tractors, as with most things today, started online. I started from the position that a Walk-behind Tractor would be the optimum choice because on the surface it met two of the most important criteria, Fuel requirements, and maintainability. The most important question remained, how much land could be worked with it and still expect it to last a lifetime.

Dean M., one of my online sources, who has actually been running a Market Garden since 1989, says that much of that time was spent downsizing his garden to it’s current 1.5 acres. According to Dean,one to two acres is about all one person can work, when trying to maximize the production of a garden. The general consensus is, that the limit on how large a garden you could work with one of these machines,is really set by how much labor was available, rather than the capacity of the machine. To answer that question I needed input from an expert. In my web search I found many companies that make and sell this kind of equipment, but they are almost all overseas. Of the domestic companies most only sell Walk-behinds as a sideline. I found Earth Tools, a company in Owenton, Kentucky, which specializes in small-scale commercial agriculture equipment. Joel Dufour founded Earth Tools in 1977, and all they sell is Walk-behind tractors. .

I asked Mr. Dufour about the capability, capacity, and requirements of walk behind tractors for a TEOTWAWKI scenario. He recommended not the largest one he sells, the 948 but rather the model 852, which comes with an optional 10 hp diesel engine. He says the 852s are far more versatile than the 948. Based on what his customers are actually doing with the units, and have been doing for nearly 30 years he gave me the following information about capabilities, and requirements of these units.
You can work up to two acres of Market garden per person, and/or about 15 acres of Haying for livestock. With proper preventative maintenance, used in a commercial agricultural operation, a tractor like he sells will last 20+ years. They can haul up to one ton on a two-wheel trailer. Depending on the specific task, running 8 hrs on a gallon of fuel is possible. He has several customers that make their own biodiesel and run their 852s on it, and have reported no problems.

When it comes to maintenance requirement the diesel engines are designed for 5,000 hours TBO (Time Between Overhauls), and are meant to be rebuilt twice before replacing crankshafts or connecting rods. That means that the engines have a 15,000 hr life span minimum (with proper maintenance). For routine maintenance they only use 1.5 quarts of oil per change, which needs to be done every 75 ours or annually–whichever comes first. The oil filter is cleanable and the air filter is replaceable. The conical clutch lasts 1,000 – 2,000 hrs, and can be replaced in less than 2 hrs. All maintenance, including overhauls can be done with regular hand tools, the only exception being one $25 tool for working on the transmission if it’s ever needed.

One point that Mr. Dufour thinks is undersold is safety. He pointed out that one of the most common fatal accidents on a farm is a tractor rollover. When operating one of these units on a slope, even if you were on the downhill side of the machine, and you couldn’t get out of the way, they only weight about 300 lbs, so it is very unlikely you would suffer a life threatening injury. Where as with even the smallest of standard tractors if it rolls over on you, death is the very likely outcome.

So let’s look at how these machines match my original requirements:

Size of Farm:
A 10 HP machine will work as much land as most of us will be able to get, and work, without being too big for the job.
Number of people available to work the land:
The constraint is number of people vs. planting/harvesting schedule; again it is well matched to the 5 to 15 acres, with which most of us will wind up.
Maintainability:
There is nothing that the owner can’t do on these machines, from routine maintenance to a complete overhaul, which would require more than basic mechanics hand tools, and one inexpensive specialty tool.
Safety: I don’t care how much the machine can do or how well it does it, the one thing that you absolutely cannot afford in the post-TEOTWAWKI world, is an injury. So the machine that is least likely to cause me harm is way up on my list
Fuel availability/economy:
These units can be had with Gas, or Diesel engines. Gas engines can be run on alcohol with modification. Diesel engines can be run on biodiesel without modification.
Life expectancy under the projected load:
You can work as much acreage as you have time and people to work without over working the tractor. They are truly an agricultural grade machines, not glorified Home duty units.
While I’m not trying to sell this particular tractor, however if we use its characteristics as a baseline then I think it is fare to say that a diesel Walk-behind Tractor would make an ideal vehicle for a Micro-farm. It is the core power unit for almost all farm tasks, can be adapted to do just about anything else that requires up to 10 HP; from electrical generation to pumping water, with the right connection to the PTO. It also meets or exceeds the core requirements that I laid out at the beginning. This is not to say that there might not be other machines that would also work, but if you are starting from scratch like most of us, then this is a good objective solution.
Related info:
http://www.earthtoolsbcs.com/
http://www.chelseagreen.com/1989/items/neworganicgrower
http://www.bcsshop.com/
http://www.adriatica-grifo.it/g/main.htm

JWR Adds: 
From the standpoint of a small acreage survival retreat, a walk-behind tiller/tractor makes a lot of sense. When the Schumer hits the fan, fuel will be at a premium, so it is logical to get something that will give you maximum useful work with minimum fuel consumption. And as Fanderal mentioned, they will also minimize tractor rollover accidents. This is especially important at a retreat with a lot of newbies. (Just because you are accustomed to thinking “safety first” at all times doesn’t mean that your recently-transplanted Big City friends and cousins will be!) 

If you need to cultivate significantly larger acreage, then a full-size tractor makes sense, but only of course with significantly more training and more voluminous fuel storage.  BTW, the new “crawler” (rubber tracked) tractors have a lower center of gravity that traditional wheeled tractors and hence are much less prone to rollovers.

I used a gas engine Troy-Bilt Horse tiller for several years and found it very reliable. The BCS products are made in Milan, Italy. At a list price of $3,799, these are not cheap.  But if you go with the principle of “buying something sturdy and reliable once, versus buying something flimsy, multiple times”, then this sort of purchase makes sense. To get the most for your money, shop around for a slightly used, diesel-powered unit.

One other consideration: Tractors are noisy and can be heard from a long distance. Wear hearing protection whenever operator a tractor or tiller.  In a post-TEOTWAWKI survival situation, this may mean one individual wearing earmuffs operating the tractor, and another individual that is concealed 50 to 100 yards away, on dedicated security duty.  (Otherwise, operating noisy equipment like a tractor or chainsaw might be a noisy invitation to get bushwhacked.)

Here are some additional useful URLs:
http://www.groworganic.com/item_GT034_.html
http://www.wikco.com/bcsfeaturesg.html

Here was a letter in reply:

Jim:
In response to the excellent article, “The Micro-Farm Tractor”, I have to say my best bet for all-around small farm tool would be the diesel all terrain vehicle (ATV). ATVs have quickly infiltrated into many farms today, as haulers, sprayers, snowplows, transport, and so on. You can purchase many available farm accessories that make it into the equivalent of a mini-tractor, as well has many hunting related accessories, since they appeal to the hunter’s market as well, like gun racks, camo, storage, and essential noise-cutting mufflers (very effective units can be had at Cabela’s). I would suggest a diesel unit, since they are longer lasting, more reliable, and you can use stored (for several years with proper preservation) or improvised diesel (biodiesel.)  I was out elk hunting last year in foul weather and I immediately saw the advantage hunters had getting around in the muck with an ATV. If we had actually taken an elk, we would have had to spend all weekend hauling pieces of it out! (In a way we were glad we didn’t get one where we were hunting, seven miles down a mucky old road, with steep hills to the right and a steep ravine to the left). With an ATV, we could have gotten a whole animal out in one or two goes, with a lot less slogging in the muck. Just make sure you’ve got a winch, and maybe even a come-along. Also, many of the hunters were able to cruise with an ATV on trails that would (and have) gotten me stuck in the mud. To sum it up, I plan on purchasing one or two as soon as our move to a few acres of rural property in southern utah is completed early next year to use as my mini-tractor, hunting companion, snow plow, all-around hauler and 4 wheel drive short distance transport. – Dustin

JWR Replies:  In addition to biodiesel, you can also legally use home heating oil if operating off road. (The only significant differences between diesel and home heating oil are the “no tax cheating” added dye and the standard for ash content.) There are several options for diesel-powered ATVs. These include:

The Kawasaki Mule.

and,

The John Deere Gator.

(The U.S. Army Special Forces uses John Deere Gators, but I’m not sure if that’s because they are the best ones made, or just because of a “Buy American”  contracting clause.

Note: Polaris also made a diesel quad back around 2002, but they were reportedly problematic, so they were quickly discontinued.