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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Minimum Tools For Small-Time Garden Farming
  • Date: Sat, 05 Dec 2009 07:31:56 -0700



(Gene is good, but is using powered machinery really the minimum? Not for me)

The Minimum Tools For Small-Time Garden Farming
http://organictobe.org/index.php/2008/09/16/the-minimum-tools-for-small-time-garden-farming/
>From Gene Logsdon (1985)
WIth Update - September 2008
Garden Farm Skills

One of the chief advantages of the small garden farm based on grassland
farming with pasture and crop rotations is that only a small portion of the
total farm is cultivated, and of that cultivated part, only an even smaller
portion needs to be cultivated at any one time. To ascertain your power and
tool requirements on such a farm, you do not look at total acreages, but
rather the number of acres that necessarily have to be cultivated in any one
day.

Tractors and Mowers
On a place such as mine with 23 total acres, approximately 10 are in woods,
orchard, garden, house, barn and so on; 1½ in pasture. At no time do I have
to cultivate more than ½ acre per day and seldom do I have to mow more than ½
acre a day, either. Therefore, these are my points of maximum power and tool
requirements. A walk-behind commercial two-wheeled tractor with tiller and
attachments for mowing would suffice—would even have the power to pull one of
those small manure spreaders now on the market. I’m speaking of the truly
heavy-duty two-wheeled tillers, like the Ferrari, the largest Mainline, or
the Gem from Howard Rotavator. These are European models and there are
others, plus some from Japan. They have not sold well in this country because
Americans like to ride, even though for the privilege of a four-wheeled
rider, they pay a couple thousand more dollars without necessarily gaining
anything in performance. If you’re not interested in saving money or the
handy maneuverability of two-wheeled tractors, you need an 18 to 30 h.p.
small farm tractor. Having gone that far, you are capable of farming quite a
bit larger place on an 11½:1½ ratio of pasture to cultivated crops.

For example, because I was in a position to procure old equipment rather
cheaply, I own an old 30 h.p. tractor, which can handle any of the following:
an 8-foot disc dragging a 10-foot harrow behind it, a two-bottom moldboard
plow, a 7-foot sickle bar mower, a 5-foot rotary mower, a two-horse manure
spreader, an 8-foot side-delivery rake, plus my 6-foot combine. These are the
tools I find adequate for my cropping system (see All Flesh Is Grass). The
reason I have both a sickle bar and a rotary mower is that I use the latter
to keep open my lanes in the woods, to chop cornstalks, and to mow pastures
after they have been grazed down and only rough weeds and dead grass remain.
The sickle bar is for cutting hay. With these tools and tractor I could also
farm more land than I presently do.

Since my equipment is capable of cultivating 5 acres a day without
difficulty, I could handle, based on the 11½:1½ ratio of pasture to
cultivated crops, a total farming area of 115 acres—100 in pasture and 15 in
a cultivated field rotated to corn, wheat/oats, and hay. I would have to add
a baler to my list of equipment in that event, and hire help during the June
hay-making period, since I might be faced with making a cutting of hay from
nearly half of that pasture acreage. But even with this addition, contrary to
what a machinery dealer would pencil out for conventional farming, grassland
farming would require a comparatively low outlay of cash to equip a small
commercial farm.

What does that translate to in terms of livestock and therefore profits? On
my 11½:1½ farmed acres, I raise enough feed for 2 small cows and their
calves, 10 sheep and lambs, and about 30 hens. At 115 acres, that translates
roughly into ten times that number of animals or 20 cows and calves, 100
sheep and lambs, and 300 chickens. This is even without pushing for the
highest fertility.

A year in my little fields sees my “least-cost” tools used in this manner.
Starting in early spring, the first plantings are made with the little
broadcast seeder seeding clover and alfalfa on the new wheat and reseeding
various legumes and grasses into the permanent pastures. Sometimes I’ve used
the disc very lightly to scratch little furrows into the permanent pasture
surface for the seeds to lodge in, but not usually. In late April as soon as
the soil is dry enough, I disk the other half of last year’s corn plot (half
has already been planted the previous fall to wheat) and sow it to oats,
again using the little broadcast seeder. The disking not only opens the soil
a little for the seed, but kills the first wave of newly sprouting weeds in
the soil. I interplant red clover and alfalfa with the oats. The next job is
planting corn in the fall-plowed plot that was last year’s hay plot. I use
the the tractor, disc, and harrow to prepare the seedbed, although
occasionally, I have used the garden tiller instead. I then plant this ½ acre
with a little hand-pushed row seeder. I use garden tiller and hoe for weed
cultivation. After corn harvest in the fall, I disk half of that plot and
plant it to wheat with the broadcaster. After the last harvest on the hay
plot, it is plowed, usually in November. That is the extent of the
cultivation for the year.

Mowing and harvesting hay is, of course, the bigger part of the labor. From
late May to about June 20 I am making hay, either in the hay plot of the
cultivated crop area or out in the pasture field, more or less continuously
during the clear weather between rains. I usually do not cut more than ½ acre
at a time. On the hay plots, I will make hay again in August/September, or if
the hay is mainly alfalfa, in July, again in August, and perhaps again in
late September, although I like to turn under the last cutting for green
manure.

Motor Hygiene
Your lawn and garden tractor dealer is secretly glad that human beings aren’t
half as concerned about the cleanliness of their machinery as they are about
the cleanliness of their bodies. If they were, fewer machines would be sold
each year because the old ones would last much longer. Dirt sells more new
lawn mowers than advertising does. Dirt gets into the engine by way of dirty
oil or a dirty air filter, and the subsequent abrasion wears out the engine.
Dirt coating the exterior of the engine block makes the motor run too hot.
Dirt accumulating on external movable parts makes them wear faster. We all
know this, but nothing is easier to procrastinate about than motor hygiene.
These simple steps will add years to your equipment:

1. At least once a year, clean the engines of your tiller, mower, chain saw,
and so forth, especially between the fins of the engine block. Those fins are
there to help keep the block from getting to hot when the motor is running.
Dirt between the fins negates their effectiveness. If you can take the
housing off from around the motor, cleaning can be done fairly easily with a
wire brush. If the housing is difficult to take off, work the dirt loose with
an old, long-necked screwdriver, a piece of wire, or some similar utensil and
then blow the dirt out. An air compressor is great for this purpose, if you
have one. If you use a screwdriver or other tool, watch out for air governors
and external coils.

2. On water-cooled engines, blow out any dirt that has accumulated on the
radiator, too.

3. Wipe away excess grease or oil on exterior moving parts. Dirt collects in
such spots and can cause problems over the years.

4. Carbon collects on some muffler ports and partially plugs them, causing
the engine to lose power. Keep those ports all the way open.

5. Clean air filters as your maintenance manual directs. Don’t shirk. A dirty
filter shortens the lifetime of a motor, and if plugged with dirt, will not
allow the motor to run with the proper fuel-air mixture. This is particularly
critical on chain saws. Clean those air intake filters often.

6. Change the oil every year or as the manual dictates. Running the motor a
few minutes beforehand will heat the oil

7. If the machine is not to be used over a long period of time (several
months) drain out the old fuel. Remove the plug and screen from the bottom of
the fuel tank and flush out the tank to remove those specks of dirt that
always accumulate there. Make sure the breather hole in the cap is not
plugged.

8. Again, if the machine is not to be used for several months, remove the
spark plug(s) and pour a couple of tablespoons of oil into each cylinder.
Turn the engine over by hand several times to spread the oil over the
cylinder walls. Leave the piston at the very top position of its stroke or at
the “fire” position so no valves are open. Carefully wire-brush away any
carbon or corrosion on the spark plug tip before replacing it. Or buy a new
one if the engine hasn’t been starting as easily as it once did. The oil in
the cylinder will cause the motor to smoke excessively for a minute or so
when you take it out of storage and start it again. Don’t be alarmed.

9. When replacing a patched or new tube in a tire, check the inside of the
tire carefully for dirt or anything that might later wear a hole in the tube.
Recently when I was mowing off some thorny bushes, a tire went flat. Before I
replaced the patched tube I checked the inside surface of the tire. It looked
clean. but when I ran my fingers over the surface, I discovered five more
thorns, just barely sticking through the tire. They were not easily seen from
the tread side, either. They would have eventually worked on through and
caused me no end of flat tires.
~

Update - September 2008: I’m very surprised at how current this info still
is. I still use that same tractor in the same ways. Still have the same
overall philosophy of farming too. I have changed disks but the other
equipment is still the same. The only thing that has changed is my son’s age!
~Gene
~
See also Gene’s Getting The Most Out Of A Farm Or Garden Tractor
~~
Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot
County, Ohio.
Gene is author ofThe Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse
(Culture of the Land),
The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life, and All Flesh Is Grass:
Pleasures & Promises Of Pasture Farming
Excerpted from Gene Logsdon’s Practical Skills: A Revival of forgotten
Crafts, Techniques, and Traditions, 1985
Image Credit: Gene and Carol Logsdon






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