Tractor-Mounted Hedge Trimmer

Tractor-Mounted Hedge Trimmer MOWERS Mowers (31H) 22-3-9 "Before we came up with this idea it took hundreds of hours to trim our hedges by hand," say Leslie and Stan Bonnett, who made a tractor-powered hedge trimmer by mounting a lawn mower on a 3-pt. hitch on their tractor. The Gravelbourg, Sask., farmers have 1/2 mile of caragana hedges that are up to 8 ft. wide and 7 ft. high. They used a gas powered 24-in. push mower with the handles removed. It mounts on back of their Case 50 hp utility tractor on a home-built 3-pt. hitch frame. Built out of sq. tubing, the 3-pt. hitch ex-tends behind the tractor. A 12-ft. length of 6-in. dia. pipe mounts on top of the frame, ex-tending out to the right side of the tractor. A hanging frame mounts underneath the pipe to carry the mower. A hydraulic cylinder mounts between the 3-pt. hitch frame and the mower. It's used to move the mower back and forth along the pipe. The Bonnetts say they can trim even the widest hedges in two passes. Cutting height is adjustable from 3 to 7 ft. off the ground simply by raising or lowering the 3-pt. "It's a real time saver," says Bonnett, who used scrap metal from the frame of a junked swather to build the unit. "Some of our hedges run along the side of a road and the first time we used it we were trimming from the side not visible from the road," he says. "We nearly caused traffic accidents because all motorists saw was this lawn mower mysteriously trimming along the top of the hedge." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Leslie Bonnett, Box 504, Gravelbourg, Sask., Canada S0H 1X0 (ph 306 648-2815).

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