Needs lots of advice!!!

My $.02

You have a real impressive list of things you want - but what do you NEED? Where do you want to end up? What's the goal here?

What's the post hole digger for? Are you going to run livestock? You are using wooden posts then? Otherwise using steel posts, kind of a waste of money for only digging 6-8 corner posts on your small acrage.

What's the chipper for? Only costs you money to grind up the wood, and throw it in a pile - just drag it off & throw it in a pile - same difference, much cheaper, much safer.

What's the tiller for? You doing a big garden - sounds good. You want to plant 20 acres of farm crops? An old plow, disk, & harrow(drag) would be cheaper & better & less power & less parts to buy. (By the way, for a tiller be SURE your tractor has a very slow low gear - very slow!)

Be careful mowing dich banks. I do every year - but if you are new to this, it is VERY dangerous. You can get pulled in real quick. Might want to just clean up the weeds a little & let the bank grow native - folks seem to want us to leave them alone these days anyhow. You'd like a sickle with a breakaway, and pitmanless so it will cut well while flexing up & down the banks - altho, I mow mine with a Ford 501 pitman, & the breakaway broke & dad welded back together...

The disk mower will cut through more things, but costs dearly, can be dangerou around rocks, and will be much heavier, which makes it more dangerous on those ditch slopes....

Wish I had a backhoe. Just can't afford it. But then, I'm trying to actually farm! :)

Now for those ready to read me the riot act: David asked for advise. Mine is just kind of a reality check. All this stuff is just wonderful, but is it needed? We aren't hearing what it will be used for. If you have that part all thought out, & you have tilling jobs lined up, & you plan on putting in 500 wooden posts, & there are local burning bans & there is no good place for a brush pile on your place, and .... Hey, like I said, it sounds like a great list of machinery. I'm just not sure it's what you NEED. If it's what you WANT, go for it, enjoy, have fun. :) And play safe.

--->Paul

Chipper/shredder - The limbs along the roads on my lands have to be cut back every year so I can get the truck and tractor down to the lower lands and creek. I have no where to pile them and I can't burn them. Not sure If I need a 3pt shreader or just a 10hp roll around.

Posthole digger - I will be putting down about a mile of split-rail fencing along my driveway in hard rocky soil in addition to corner post on the lower field.

Tiller - Will be doing a medium size garden and loosen/turning some bare rocky spots so grass will grow.

Sicklebar - I used the backhoe to put 24x24 ditches down both sides of my driveway to stop the wash-over during our heavy rains and now need to mow over those ditches and I have two wet weather creeks and a full time creek that I need to mow the 3-4 foot weeds along the banks. At present I make half moon passes with my 6' mower letting it slip off the edge. SCARY! The ground is level though.

On the tiller, the only thing I'd recommend is to be sure the drive train is protected by a slip clutch, and keep the slip clutch adjusted and maintained.

You may want to look into a small disc mower rather than a sicklebar. Works better on brushy stuff, cheaper to replace knives when you whack one on a rock. More expensive to buy intially, I'm pretty sure.

Folks tell me I can't run a 5' rotary mower with my 20 horse tractor either, which is odd, considering I've been doing it for 12 years, and cutting some pretty impressive brush with it, too...