The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Equipment => Topic started by: Ste78 on March 22, 2025, 10:50:50 am
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Hello everyone, my first post on here!..I have an 8acre small holding in Scotland. We use about 2acre and the rest is rough grazing / previously used for horses but can get wet and includes some areas of rushes. I’m hoping to cut a path around it so I can walk my elderly dog through summer as she can’t go far anymore. Looking for ideas on what best equipment is - I guess patch would be over 500m length and about 2m wide so thinking I might by need a quad with flail but hoping others here have had similar situations…thanks in advance for any help/ideas
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Welcome! We are in a fairly similar situation but we use the whole area. We use a topper behind a Siromer small tractor. That might seem beyond your current needs, but if you intend to make use of the rest of your land, you will find that a small tractor and implements will be very useful. (We were given a larger tractor too, which is used for larger machinery for haymaking, such as a baler.)
For the wet areas, we have found that planting willow and alder trees helps to dry the area, provides shade and firewood.
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If you have friendly local farmers, you might well find that one will top a patch for you for a consideration.
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You might be able to hire a quad and flail and once done, you shjould be able to use a topper (and tractor)
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Thinking back, when my Dad retired from farming, he kept back 20 acres or so and planted it up with trees, letting wildflowers come if they wished. He made paths using just a ride-on mower very successfully. It depends on how long the grass is to begin with.
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I just purchase a new, to me, zero turn mower with a 62" deck. The guy I bought it from used to use it to maintain a perimeter around his hay field amongst other things. He gave me a demo on grass that must have been 10-12" high and it did it with ease. If you can find one this should be cheaper than a quad and flail combo
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we bought a tow behind flail and used car (small 4wd). i'll add link when i can find it