Equipment for large-scale agriculture is too big or too expensive, and many home gardening tools don’t work efficiently on larger jobs or break easily. Tiny farming on plots up to two or three acres requires its own special gear…
At work on water: Rochelle changes an shutoff valve—a tap!—to the 1″ header pipe that runs from the well through the field. Not exactly a big pipe by irrigation standards, OK for our low volume use. You could call it … Read the rest
Imagine a world of soil without stones… In the three farming locations I’ve fully worked, they’ve been everywhere and in all sizes. You get used to them: collecting heavier, smoother specimens for weighting row cover, moving even bigger ones to … Read the rest
Beet seed in ye olde Planet Jr. hopper. Still celebrating this seeder: takes some getting to know, and well worth it. A little rusty, but working like new. … Read the rest
Toothpick timekeeping system. Two toothpicks means two days hardening off in the sun. Simple and, I suspect, sustainabls – a single box of toothpicks could probably be made to last a lifetime. For when you’re not doing everything at once…… Read the rest
Tape time again, measuring out this year’s market garden. I’ve come up with various schemes to do away with this step as an annual thing, but end up wanting to move things around, or accidentally tilling under a critical stake … Read the rest
Ice storm. Some strange, quick mix of rain and freezing cold that puts a thick coating of ice on everything, and creates sturdy little icicles wherever water drips (like, above, from the 3-point hitch that’s attaching the rototiller to the … Read the rest
Picked up a small shipment of new plug sheets and webbed trays at the post office. I really stretch ’em out, have some going for years—they’re reusable, but not incredibly tough, especially when you take them into the field for … Read the rest