Last time I blogged on a motorhead theme I made light of a 1970s Lamborghini tractor I'd spotted a few hundred meters from our front gate. Back then, the thought of operating a machine anywhere near the size of that old beast was pretty far from my mind. My (then newly-acquired) Toro 48-inch Timecutter mower, with its ability to tow a small garden trailer, seemed, at around 290 kg (about 640 lbs), like the heftiest piece of "agro" equipment I'd ever need. In fact the first few times I got on my new Timecutter, with its gangly "motion control" levers, loud and choppy 24 hp Kawasaki petrol engine mounted right behind my head, and three 17-inch steel blades spinning under my ass, I was pretty nervous, having spent most of my motoring life at the controls of more conventional vehicles.
Like, you know, cars. Prior to my riding mower, I'd driven primarily passenger cars on marked, reasonably well-maintained public roads finished with asphalt. But as any off-roader knows, when you head into open country, all bets are off. One minute you're cruising along on a grassy version of an open lot, the next you're either hung up on a boulder, pinned against a tree, stuck in sand or mud or, worse, sliding uncontrollably towards one or more of those obstacles. Given the steeply sloped nature of several sections of Poggiosole's upper and lower olive groves, it was the last of these conditions – sliding uncontrollably – that, as I ventured further from our inner grove in an effort to clean up long-neglected areas, began to plague my outings on the Toro Timecutter. Some of those slides were extended, and, given the possibility of ending up in a ditch or pinned under the Toro, they were scary.
With the Toro it was plainly impossible to cut grass (never mind anything thicker) in a bunch of places I wanted to clear and keep tidy. Amongst the alternatives were a string trimmer or walk-behind electric push mower: slow and, on steeply sloped sections of grove, exhausting. Another alternative would have been to fire up a hulking 1970s SAME "Taurus C" tractor planted above our lower grove since... forever. Sitting under a threadbare tarp, the Taurus bore a striking resemblance to the "local Lambo" I'd poked fun at. I had a vendor / friend who owns a local earth-moving firm look it over. The memory of him looking at me, then at the Taurus, then back at me, then shaking his head, is in my top five "welcome to farming" moments since I first started working our olive groves in early 2022. My friend noted the lack of a ROPS bar and the crude throttle control and said something to the effect of "death trap" in Italian. I found a guy who gave me €700 for it (after a hard tug from a larger machine the Taurus started and drove up from our lower grove on its own power!).
Then I did some research and learned there are more capable mowing machines for hilly terrain than my little Toro. In fact zero-turn mowers like the Timecutter are known to be especially ill-suited to hilly terrain, due to their uneven weight dstribution, scarce tread depth and two-wheel drive, with the other two wheels serving as mere casters. On the other hand I learned that most traditional farm tractors, with their oversize rear wheels, high driving position and rear mowing and brush-clearing attachments are not a great solution either. They can be top-heavy and, having been originally designed as tilling machines, they are less effective for cutting grass because their mower decks are mounted behind the operator. This can lead to grass and brush getting momentarily flattened by the tractor's tires and undercarriage before the cut. Finally the tall stance of traditional farm tractors, while providing good visibility and ground clearance, meant that type of machine would not fit, height-wise, in the part of our tool shed that I had earmarked as a tractor bay. Building any new structure in our area is a nightmare.
As I kept searching I discovered a US-made "compact tractor" called Ventrac. At first glance the Ventrac looks like a garden tractor, but it isn't priced like one. Its wheels are all relatively small but they mount under-inflated balloony ATV tires and are all actively driven. Plus the Ventrac's wheels can be doubled-up, increasing the tractor's contact patch dramatically while remaining gentle on grassy terrain (which can get massively torn up by treads like those mounted on the old local Lambo or the Taurus C). The small diameter wheels allow the Ventrac to hug the ground, and its frame flexes in the middle thanks to a
simple but ingenious steel bar linking the front and rear halves of the chassis. The low center of gravity, large contact patch and oscillating frame combine to allow the Ventrac to operate safely on slopes up to 30, even 32° (equivalent to a 62% grade... that's really steep). And since they're primarily designed for grounds management versus tilling, Ventracs mount all their attachments (most are mower decks) on the front rather than the rear. That makes it easier to put the mower blades into tight spaces or under the canopies of smaller trees like the ones in our olive groves.
In short, the Ventrac seemed like an ideal machine for Poggiosole. Unfortunately, there were no used ones for sale anywhere in Europe, much less Italy, and the only engine variant available in a new machine when I first contacted their Italian distributor was a 25 hp diesel. I wanted more power than that and I wanted a petrol engine, so that I'd only have to store one type of fuel. And, again, the very un-garden-tractor-like price: around 60 thousand euros with the three-bladed "Tough Cut" brush-hog attachment. That was a stretch. So we rolled up our sleeves and ran our very first Kickstarter campaign.
I eventually ended up buying a demo Ventrac 4520N from a dealer in the US. Their excellent sales manager (a guy named Jess), along with our Kickstarter backers, made it possible for me to purchase a petrol variant with a 33 hp engine that was CE-certified. I had to jump through a ton of hoops to import the damn thing, but, beyond saving about €10K on the purchase (after shipping and Italian import duty) I ended up getting amazing pre- and post-sales support from Jess, who had been operating and selling the Ventrac 4500 series (and its antecedents) for 20 years. I even flew him out once the machine arrived, and he helped me mount the dual wheels, hook up the Tough Cut deck, and work up the courage to take my first spins on it. That was in July of last year (regular blog readers will have caught a glimpse of the tractor during its uncreating and before the dual wheels went on, in this post).
Towards the end of 2024 I worked with Jess to import a second mower deck, one that spins 40 flail knives at 3000 rpm along a 72-inch (183 cm) drum. Relative to the Tough Cut deck, the "Fine Cut" flail mower deck cuts turf much shorter, more or less pulverizing grass and smaller plants as it bobs along the terrain. To put this beast of an attachment in perspective, it alone weighs 40 kg more than my Toro Timecutter. Hook it to the 4520 with dual wheels and you're driving a rig that tips the scale at 1120 kg... almost four times the Toro. It looks and feels quadruple too... and cost me 7X. 😬
Verdict? It's early days and, as tractors go, I'm still a beginner. As impressive as the Ventrac's specs are, damp conditions can still cause it to slide on steep slopes, though nothing like the hair-raising-abandon-all-hope slides the Toro would get into. Still, mowing across even a 20º wet grade with an immoveable object (like an olive tree) below you is not a good plan. Ditto trying to clear brush where you can't see what shape and grade the ground below the brush has (the flip side of the Ventrac's low stance and center of gravity is limited ground clearance, relative to typical farm tractors). I've learned those lessons the hard way. But a few dents and scrapes later, I will say that, for land like ours, for hilly, grassy tree orchards, this seems just the ticket.
I am able to mow most anywhere. With our farm trailer hitched, I can now haul sacks of fertilizer or logs and branches from clearing dead or diseased trees and invasive Spanish broom without our wheelbarrows. Later this year I'll be trailing an orchard sprayer for the first time, and, thanks to the Ventrac's grip, cover virtually every tree in our groves with the organic leaf fertilizer it disperses. The Ventrac's oscillating FlexFrame isn't just smart, it's trippy. As as the terrain starts to get dramatic you instinctively move your feet from the tractor's floorboard to footrests mounted somewhat high and to either side of the engine compartment, which is in the front half of the tractor, oscillating relative to the half your butt is sitting on. The result is a rocking motion that enagages your hips and legs and connects you to the contours of the ground moving under you. Hard to describe, but oddly satisfying! As for performance, prodigious traction aside, the Tough Cut deck decimates thick thorny brush and even small saplings that would jam the Toro Timecutter completely (I've continued to use the Timecutter in our inner grove, where its zero-turn capability and more compact dimensions come in handy). And after clearing tall, rough growth with the Ventrac's Tough Cut deck, the flail leaves a tight, even cut that has turned most of our previously unkempt fields into smooth meadows. I think it's a keeper.
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