It soon became quite evident that 8 acres of land requires more than a rather antiquated ride on lawn mower and a shovel is not going to keep things tidy.

We spent quite bit of time comparing mini tractors. Once you start looking at £25,000 plus for one and a couple of tools, we ended up looking at the Chinese alternatives.

In the end we settled on a Siromer and ended up going to TRW Engineering in Tavistock.

It needed quite a bit of research deciding on what horsepower model we would need. A fellow small holder suggested you’ll need more HP than you think, so we settled on the 25 hp RD54-A model.

This had the shuttle gearbox and two double-acting spool valves at the rear. It has a total of 4 gears in two ratios as well as two/four wheel drive.

As for the accessories. The back hoe was a must have. All the rock we had that needed digging up, post holes digging and any one of a hundred other jobs really couldn’t be done without one.

Next was how to cut all the grass. We looked at a topper, but realised this wouldn’t handle and of the gorse or brush clearance tasks, so ended up going for a 5ft wide flail mover with power offset. In retrospect, the power offset is an unnecessary luxury, but better to over specify than under.

To finish off was the back loader/box. This seems to be capable of lift around a ton, which is just as well as the amount of rock we have subsequently moved around, in the first few weeks of ownership, has been eye watering.

It’s never going to be this clean ever again 🙂