Well Hodge & Kubotasam,you have reinforced my suspicions.
And Eric, now you just confused me more.
. Your opinion is valued and it is an option to consider.
Growing up on 50's era Row Crop tractors, I have no concept of the capabilities of Compact tractors in this class. And yes I learned to make do with less than ideal equipment in the 50's & 60's. Bottom line is a small tractor and a bigger would be ideal, but a tough sell to my finacial advisor(wife).
I do like the mechanical simplicity of two wheel drive, and the additional maintainece issues of all wheel drive is a consideration. But don't want to handicap myself either.
Kubotasam: no such thing as a flat lawn. The whole 8.9 acres is one big hill.
The house and garden are on the mildest of slopes.
While the past two years I have flat tilled the entire 6,000 sq ft of garden.
It occured to me that it was silly to do so when more than a third of the area tilled was walkways. So my intent is to reseed to grass this fall.
And then till only the strips I would be planting in, and form raised beds for the crops. Some of you may have seen the bedshapers sold by Buckeye tractor, and I intend to build one to fit what ever tractor I end up with.
So a small tractor would be an asset for that part of the job.
Many of the chores a larger machine would be better. Especially as you mention Hodge, while we had a very mild winter last year. I sure can't count on it normally we get some heavy snows.
The neighbor(We share the lane) plowed what we had with a polaris 4x4 ATV last winter.
I've looked at a few of the smaller L series machines(around 20 hp) as well. But notice that 1 mph is the lowest speed available in them.
Which brings me to the question. Is there an optimum ground speed for operating a tiller? I may be wrong in my assumption that a ground speed under 1 mph is required? Now I realize conditions have a lot of bearing on this. And can tell you my soil is mostly Clay/loam, though I have been adding organics(tilling in mulch and grass clippings) to loosen it up.