Well, if your driveway slopes. Then you might consider a snowblower with tracks. If the prices are out of your price range. Then just look around for a good used unit. Because I will either fix them or replace the engines. I normally get them a lot cheaper. I currently have 8 snowblowers. Some are ready to use and others are not. I have a set of tracks, but I have not installed them on a snowblower yet. 2 of the snowblowers that I have, have been modified. One of them is a Toro 521, or should I say it was. Now it has a 7.75 ohv engine on it and it is awesome. It just plowed through the 2 feet of snow that we got last year. It didn't even bog down even it the heavy wet snow. The only thing that I did was push the snowblower to the limits just to see how it would do. I am impressed. All I did was stretch out the auger belt. What ever you end up getting. Just be sure to keep at least a set of shear pins (never use regular bolts), drive and auger belts. Good luck, Jeff

As a long time Honda user/owner of all sorts of products, I think your choice is an excellent one. There is no question that Ariens and Simplicity also make excellent products and that you should look at those IF they are supported in your area. However, the hydrostatic drive plus the tracks makes the Honda an amazing machine to operate. Yep, tracked machines can be slightly more difficult to turn but wheeled machines are no treat either. I prefer the gripping power of the tracks because they make the unit nearly unstoppable. As for design and throwing ability, Honda knows what they are doing. It snows in Japan, just like it snows in North America. I bought one of the first tracked snowblowers that Honda made and gave it to my father as a present back in the mid-eighties. He loved the machine. It started with one pull every single time. It was only 5.5 hp but that unit threw snow better than the ten hp American made models his neighbours owned. When he moved to a retirement home in 1995, I sold that blower to some friends of mine and they are still using it today. My second choice would be the Ariens but if cost is no object, then I would definitely choose the Honda.

I agree with keep the Wheelhorse and put a snow blower for it. While competent for plowing snow that 416 will laugh at 10" of snow with a snow thrower. It takes far less traction to shuffle through deep snow when the thrower has tossed all but an inch or two 30 feet away. I've seen what many consider ineffective LTs for snow removal become snow kings with the addition of a single stage thrower, weights, and chains. My Toro Wheelhorse 518xi literally idles along in 10" snow moving cubic yards of high mountain snow with the OEM 44" dual stage snow blower, weights, and chains. And once you've had a tractor mounted snow thrower you'll never walk behind one again and Toro offers a nifty cab for that horse. Adding a snow thrower to your 416 is both the most cost effective solution and the most effective solution you can choose. I don't know where you are but you might contact these people for info on Toro Wheelhorse snow thrower/blower attachments. click here for toro Wheelhorse attachments

There are several sites online that sell Little Bluestem seed by the pound. The commercially available seeds are: Aldous (Kansas) Cimmaron (Kansas, Oklahoma) Blaze (Nebraska) Camper (Kansas, Nebraska) I ordered some grass seed from Pase once. You get a very small amount of seed, I mean really small, like 25 seeds or less depending on the variety. The price is low but you really get what you pay for in this case. The B.S. seed sold from Plants of the SW is one that I can talk about since I planted it one year. The plants are very nice and light blue, classic bluestem with a good upright habit. The rule on starting grasses is: The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap. Bluestem seed germinates very easily but they really need warm weather. I'm trying some indoors this winter and the plants frankly look pretty dismal & haven't grown much at all in my sunny room with the south exposure. It gets a bit cold at night but I'm talking only 60 degrees. Its all but a failed experiment, I usually do much better in there with other seeds. I looked up King Ranch Bluestem. I think I've seen that growing on roadsides in waste areas or abandoned farms. The best way to tell if its bluestem at the seedling stage is that the leaves are VERY flat at the base and resemble Iris foliage, they always remind me of tiny iris. wiscons--agastache always dies on me in summer. It looks fine then up and dies. A woman on the Texas forum said the same thing happens to her every time. Maybe its the humidity? I don't know but last year was definitely my very last try since it was the supposedly 'easier' to grow 'more tolerant' cana type.