Welcome to the forum Uncle Jaque. You've come to a good place for some advice, and thank your buddy for pointing you in our direction.
Sorry to hear about your ailments, but you can thank your son-in-law for coming to your aid, and I guess thank him too for bringing along the JD and helping you make the decision to get a rider. Walk behinds are good for trim work too, so you could still get it out to use.
Being retired myself, I can appreciate the budget restraints, but there's lots of good used John Deere and Cub Cadet tractors out there that you can pick up without breaking the bank. We can thank those companies for building good products. Dealers might have good used ones, and of course, there would be the bonus of buying from a dealer, so there'd be someone to go back to if there were problems. Craig's List is usually full of good stuff to pick from.
I suppose the first place to start in your search is to kind of decide on what all you might want to do with your new rider. Will you just be cutting the lawn with it, or do you think you might be adding other attachments to it. Since you say you live in Maine, I would guess snow removal might be something you have to do every now and then too. So, you might want one you could put a snow handling attachment, like a blade or snow blower on it.
Sorry to hear about your ailments, but you can thank your son-in-law for coming to your aid, and I guess thank him too for bringing along the JD and helping you make the decision to get a rider. Walk behinds are good for trim work too, so you could still get it out to use.
Being retired myself, I can appreciate the budget restraints, but there's lots of good used John Deere and Cub Cadet tractors out there that you can pick up without breaking the bank. We can thank those companies for building good products. Dealers might have good used ones, and of course, there would be the bonus of buying from a dealer, so there'd be someone to go back to if there were problems. Craig's List is usually full of good stuff to pick from.
I suppose the first place to start in your search is to kind of decide on what all you might want to do with your new rider. Will you just be cutting the lawn with it, or do you think you might be adding other attachments to it. Since you say you live in Maine, I would guess snow removal might be something you have to do every now and then too. So, you might want one you could put a snow handling attachment, like a blade or snow blower on it.