I grew up in the northern, Pennsylvania, which as far as I can tell seems to be “the place” for garden tractors, unfortunately, I was never into them growing up. I always loved cutting grass though on riding mowers, but they were nothing fancy. After high school I enlisted in the Air Force, and got stationed at Eglin AFB, Florida. After a number of years there, I bought my first house. It had some yard, which I was excited for, as I knew I’d get to cut some grass! I wanted to get a rider, and knew I couldn’t afford one at Lowes, so I went to a local tractor dealer to see if they had anything used. At this point I had no clue what a garden tractor was, or how they compared to lawn tractors. The owner showed me one he just got in, it was a 2013 or 2015 (current time was 2018), can’t remember, D105. Nice and low end haha, but for $800 It got the job done and never gave me a single issue.

After a couple more years I got an assignment to Eielson AFB Alaska, what a change! We got a pretty nice place there, just a little over an acre, so it had a good chunk of yard, and boy did I underestimate how much it would grow! With almost 24 hours of sunlight in the summer up there, everything grows like crazy as long as there was some rain! The first summer there was pretty wet, so I was cutting constantly, twice a week, and the grass was so thick I could only do half passes. It took forever and all the little 105 had! I decided I wanted to upgrade my mower that winter. I wanted to get a really nice one, so I went to Deere’s site and started browsing. I was initially thinking “I’m going to go all out, I’m gonna get an E180” lol, then I saw there were 200s, X300s, X500s, and even X700s! I found out what a garden tractor was, what they can do, I was eating lawn mower info at this point like it was candy.

I eventually settled on an X500, I wanted to redo my driveway, and when I saw you could add the Brinly box blade to it, I though “perfect”. I was going to try and get an X590, as I wanted EFI, no more carb, but found out the dealer would have to order one (not fun in Alaska). They had 2 X580s on the way though, and between availability and price, I pulled the trigger. I’m a very technical guy, and I like to know all the specs and details. I had so many questions and I could barely find answers. Youtube had next to nothing. During this whole buying process, I decided I should start a Youtube channel, and I’d just talk about the tractor and all the attachments and answer the questions that I had. My goal was and is to just simply help people out that are also looking for this stuff and can’t find it, or to see it in use, or since I do as much of my own maintenance that I can, to help them perform maintenance, you know, the average homeowner (maybe you!) that just wants to save a buck and some time changing a filter themselves rather than taking it to a dealer. Or even just entertain people who like the hobby. I wanted to just do a channel that is honest and real. That’s why I make it clear about giving my honest opinion, even when companies want me to do a review of their product, I make it clear to them that I don’t want to be bound to only saying good things. This keeps myself and the company honest. Even when I screwed up the install of a PTO, I posted everything about it, I didn’t hide anything, I let it be a warning of what not to do! Though I still feel like everything was done right haha, but it's in the past.

Well I started making video after video, a few comments and likes were coming in, so I kept going. More and more comments came, views started going up a bit, so I kept at it. I started to really love answering questions and helping people out, exactly what my goal was to do. As time went on, I kept having troubles with my ATV, which I used for snow clearing. The diesel X700s were working their way into my mind… Long story short, I got rid of the wheeler, partially because I got too comfortable going 65 down rough forest trails and I was worried I’d kill myself, but I really wanted an X700, I wanted something more capable with a 3 point hitch that was actually capable. I ended up trading the 580 on an X758 that they ordered in for me, and I’ve been in love! Night and day difference, and I had a whole new aspect of my channel open up! More tasks, more maintenance, more accessories, and best of all, a new group of people to give answers to. The channel started growing to more than I ever thought I’d get to when I started. I hit some huge milestones for myself, 1000 subscribers, 1,000,000 views, I impressed myself! I’m by no means a big Youtuber, but I’d like to think I made an impact on the garden tractor community.

My 4 years in Alaska came to an end I got an assignment back to the Florida panhandle. I was so happy, but unfortunately the housing market and economy, as well as the change in military compensation hasn’t made it easy on us. We had to downgrade a lot, and our property now was in bad shape. Crappy grass, bumpy yard, brush everywhere. I have no garage now (oh the irony). I’m trying to clean it up though, we got the brush cleared, my next goal is to plow everything and then move dirt around to smooth everything out. We shall see. I’m always looking for reasons to use the tractor, and love finding new uses. I’m always thinking of what I can do for a video, or how to grow the channel. In the future I see need to fill the 100 series void as I come up a lot in google searches for X5 and X700s, but a majority of lawn mower buyers are D/E/S100 owners, so I need to try and find one of those cheap haha. We’ll see what the future holds!!!