Greenhorns

by Paula Manalo

  Potato Digger

  * * *

  BY ERIN BULLOCK

  After growing up in the suburbs of Rochester, New York, Erin Bullock picked up the sustainable-agriculture momentum living in the San Francisco Bay Area for six years, then in 2009 returned home to start her own CSA, Mud Creek Farm. She now leases twenty-eight acres of sandy loam in Victor, New York, grows fifty kinds of vegetables, and is looking forward to acquiring land for a permanent farm soon.

  * * *

  The first year, we dug potatoes by hand. Eighteen hundred pounds of them, with just one digging fork and lots of worn-down gloves. We loved it. Each week we were supplying seventy-five CSA members with vegetable shares from four acres of leased ground in the suburbs of Rochester, New York.

  I had just returned to the area after living in California for six years, and I had a fresh career goal in mind that involved working my butt off and getting very muddy. My parents, who lived fifteen minutes away on the cul-de-sac where I grew up, were perplexed, but also glad that I had chosen a location close to home. I had landed on a fertile piece of ground holding tight to its agrarian roots, untouched by the tentacles of sprawl.

  One less-than-hectic fall day, I was walking through the “machinery graveyard” in the nearby woods with my city friends Doug and Eli. We were trying to guess the uses for these rusty old antiques, most of which were half sunk into the ground, falling apart, and indistinguishable by us young ’uns, new as we were to farming. Was that a hay tedder? And what’s a hay tedder, anyway? This was for planting something . . . looks like the hoppers are missing. I wondered whether Bob, the eighty-four-year-old landowner who had farmed these fields for the last half century, had actually used any of this stuff, or if it was left over from the previous farmers.

  I had bought a shiny new Kubota tractor and borrowed a three-bottom plow from our fourth-generation farming neighbor, Jack. I was remembering that he had described this field we were working on as “old potato-growin’ ground,” and suddenly it dawned on me that this rusty old piece of equipment in front of me must be a potato digger! It looked about a hundred years old and had a hitch on the front to hook horses up to. We looked it over; most of the parts seemed intact, including its hard old iron seat.

  Eli and Doug suggested we use our otherwise relaxed afternoon to try it out. There were no trees growing through it, so all we needed were a few shovels to free the wheels a bit and then strong young muscles to turn it around and push it fifteen feet to where it could be hooked up to the tractor.

  We greased and oiled everything. There were a lot of working gears and levers, all functioning off the rotation of these big rusty metal wheels. I didn’t have high hopes. I thought it would just fall apart before we even got to the field. We stuck a pin through the hitch into the drawbar of the Kubota and crept at the lowest speed out into the open. I have no idea when the last time this implement had seen a field. The sun made the oil gleam on the conveyor belts.

  It creaked and limped . . . click click click click click. We all stared at the gears in wonder. It felt like some kind of revolution. Seated up on my orange diesel “horse,” I valiantly approached a two-hundred-foot bed of potatoes, nervously watching behind for signs of disaster. We stopped at the front of the row, and Doug, sitting on the cold rusty seat, pushed the lever down so the plow point touched the ground. We drove forward. The plow plunged into the hill of potatoes and up came everything — the potatoes, the dirt, the rocks. The two sets of conveyor belts shook off the dirt as the potatoes rolled off the edge gently onto the soil. We dug the whole row. It sure was a lot less effort than digging on our hands and knees.

  Looking at that creaky old tater-digger hooked up to the big new Kubota tractor, it was hard to deny the multigenerational imagery. Perhaps it was a metaphor for the cooperation between us and the veteran farmers we depended on for advice and wisdom.

  We used the machine to dig all the potatoes our second year, when we doubled our production to feed a hundred and fifty CSA members. We’re now going into our third year, doubling again to three hundred CSA members (eight solid acres of vegetables), at which point we’ll cap our growth. I’ve seen bigger farms with fancy new potato diggers, but figure we’ll try another year with Old Rusty. Diggers like this one were meant for small farms about our size anyway, back in the day when reliance on horses limited the size of their operations. I figure if it’s lasted this long, it might have left enough spunk to keep going for another generation, if I take care of it.

  * * *

  That creaky old tater-digger was a metaphor for the cooperation between us and the veteran farmers we depended on.

  * * *

  Last year we got into some heavy soil that clogged up the conveyors and as we, frustrated, kicked off the dirt from the plow point, we thought we had broken it. After all the mud gave way, we realized that a few conveyor bars were just knocked out. They simply hooked back together, just like that. Old things really were built to last and to be fixed easily in the field. Thanking my elders, I started up the loud diesel engine again and finished off the row of potatoes.

  The Dibbler

  * * *

  BY JOSH VOLK

  After working on other people’s relatively giant, tractor-scale farms for a number of years, Josh Volk started a tiny, part-time, hand-worked CSA farm two years ago. In his “free” time he tries to help other folks with their farms by writing, consulting, and designing new tools.

  * * *

  For six years, every time our crew headed out to the field to plant, they would haul a modified fifty-five-gallon drum with them. They’d pull it by its black-pipe handle down the beds, so that the stubs of pipe welded around the drum could dibble marks showing where to plant seedlings. That drum, dubbed “the Dibbler,” had probably been pulled down a hundred miles of beds and farm roads. The handle was attached to axles with iron plumbing Ts that creaked and groaned rhythmically. Everyone on the farm recognized that tune and its variations with the weather. Even after someone drove the old Ford 100 over the handle a few years later, putting a nice little bend in one side, it kept creaking away, up and down the beds.

  When I first built the thing, I didn’t intend for anyone to have to pull it (even though one farmworker, Nate, spent so much time pulling it that he became one with it, and everyone called him the Dibbler). What I had envisioned was something that would hook to the back of our spader behind the tractor. My idea was that while the spader formed a nice fluffy bed, the Dibbler would trail behind, leaving marks for the planting crew. The handle had two extra pipes sticking out of the sides, which I’m pretty sure no one else on the farm ever understood were intended to line up the Dibbler with the side plates of the spader. I’m pretty sure of this because after a few attempts at running it behind the spader, I gave up and realized it would work better if someone just pulled the thing after I marked the bed pathways with the cultivating tractor. The five-foot piece of all thread rod that I bought to hold the thing on to the spading machine ended up in the bin of spare metal parts: too useful to get rid of, too obscure to look like anything other than junk to the untrained eye.

  Among the other pieces of useful junk that accumulated on the farm over an impressively short period were several lengths of bent steel pipe. These were long sections that at one time had been part of a high tunnel that collapsed under a half-inch sheet of ice (another story for another time). Anyway, with the partial success of the Dibbler as a useful farm-built tool and a drip winder (also made from black pipe), I saw one of these pieces of steel pipe as an excellent candidate for building a mechanism for rolling out, and rolling up, floating row covers, which we were using miles of. What I needed were two big wheels; the pipe could be the axle.

  I located a wire spool, the kind the telephone company uses to run out massive lengths of cable. The spool was perfect, with four-foot-wide rounds that I was convinced would make great wheels. Four skinny, three-feet-long bolts kept the center of the spool sandwiched between the two round
s, so I removed them, separated the rounds, and made two wheels and a small pile of scrap lumber. I was sure those bolts would come in handy at some point, so I tossed those in the bin of spare metal parts and took out the straightest piece of high tunnel pipe for the axle.

  Unfortunately, the resulting row-cover winder was a bit of a disaster. The rounds were way too heavy and the whole thing was so awkward that even though rolling up the row cover by hand was one of my least favorite jobs — frequently a cold, wet, muddy, forearm-burning exercise — I temporarily admitted defeat.

  Eventually my old projects come back around, though, and new ideas on how to implement them start to form. Six years after my failure to mount the Dibbler on the spader, my process for creating beds had gotten even more complicated. Instead of making one pass to form and mark a bed with the spader, I was now making three separate passes: one with the spader, one with the cultivating tractor with a gang of three Planet Jr. seeders to mark the lines, and one by someone pulling the Dibbler to mark the in-row spacing for the plants. Although all three passes were doing something beneficial, more passes by the tractor is not better when each one costs time, diesel, and soil compaction.

  Actually, the bed-preparation process was even more complicated and imperfect than just needing three passes instead of one. For transplanted crops, I liked to mark the lines with our cultivating rake instead of the Planet Jr. seeders. This kept the soil loose, easier to plant into, and less likely to germinate weed seeds. The problem was that for all six years I had trouble marking the lines clearly enough with the rake. Even when the lines were clear, there was always some rogue on the crew who didn’t understand exactly where I wanted the plants in relation to the lines. Additionally, if the soil conditions weren’t just right, it could be difficult to see the lines, not to mention the Dibbler’s dibble marks, as they were just small indents between two faint lines.

  * * *

  Nate spent so much time pulling the drum that everyone called him the Dibbler.

  * * *

  For direct-seeded crops, I would take off the rake and mount an entirely different tool on the tractor. I liked to use a gang of three Planet Jr. seeders to mark the lines because they left a nice clear firm pathway for the walk-behind Earthway seeder, and that firm pathway seemed to help improve germination. I know it sounds silly that I was marking with one seeder and then sowing with a different seeder, but believe me, it worked better and even faster that way. In fact, it worked so much better that I felt I could justify the extra work and effort of switching out the rake on the tractor for the seeder gang every time I wanted to mark the beds. I desperately wanted to reduce that complication and added workload, though.

  One day, touring a friend’s farm, I noticed a big gang of partially rusted-out Planet Jr. seeders in his metal spare parts pile (which was being consumed by weeds, as is commonly the case on farms — at least the ones I visit). He wasn’t using the seeders, so in exchange for some help setting up a cultivator for his tractor, I took three of the press wheels off his hands. My thought was that I didn’t need the entire seeder assembly just to be marking rows, and that I should build something lighter and easier to put on and take off the tractor. I also wanted to avoid wearing out our own perfectly good but somewhat aged Planet Jr. seeders. The circumference of the press wheels was just about three feet. What I needed was a long axle that I could put all three wheels on at their proper row spacing and then three rods to attach to the wheels, to mark each foot of rotation.

  I don’t know of any shop where you can buy a skinny bolt that’s three feet long, but as luck would have it, I had four of them left over from that spool I’d taken apart four or five years before. Fortunately, my partner’s threat to take all of the “junk” metal to the recycler earlier that spring hadn’t come true yet, and searching through her consolidation of my metal piles, I came across the four bolts. Unbelievably, the bolt was the exact size I needed to slip through the bushings on the wheels. With a few spacers made from a bit of half-inch conduit, the other three bolts cut down as the rods, too many clamps bent from some failed cultivator project six years earlier, and pieces of an old bent-up truck rack I’d built for carrying seedlings years before when our greenhouse had been three miles down the road, I had cobbled together a new, improved Dibbler in just an afternoon.

  This Dibbler was silent, mounted easily on the tractor, and marked both for beds to be seeded with the Earthway and for beds to be transplanted, putting down a clear wide mark every foot. So there I had it — a slightly less complicated way of marking beds and fewer passes to make over the field. In addition, the marks made by the new Dibbler were much clearer than those from the old one, thus easier to follow by a fickle crew.

  I still haven’t come up with a good way of picking up row cover. There are still piles of old metal around the farm, though, and I’m always thinking about how I might one day put them to good use.

  Tackling a Beast

  * * *

  BY ADAM GASKA

  Adam Gaska grew up in Redwood Valley, California, and owns Mendocino Organics, a diverse biodynamic farm. He enjoys farming vegetables, grain, feed, and hay with his tractors.

  * * *

  I find myself once again staring at a beast covered in dust and grease. No, I’m not looking in a mirror. I’ve got my hands in the belly of our beast, a John Deere 4020. Lucky for us, there are just a few old, cracking hydraulic hoses in need of replacement. It’s going to set us back only a couple of hours of wrenching, straining, and cussing to find the problem, and a hundred dollars to solve the problem. That’s a pretty cheap way to appease the diesel-burning gods these days.

  Growing up, I never thought to be a mechanic or a farmer. Sometimes things just work out the way they want, personal thoughts in the matter be damned. In high school, what I really wanted to be was an engineer, and my academic path was geared accordingly. The problem was, my class schedule easily filled up with math and science with room to spare. Not really being a jock or an artsy or performing type, my options were pretty limited, so I settled on auto shop. I figured, what the heck, it’s closer to math class than choir is, and it’ll help me later in life. I’ll be able to save a few bucks by making minor repairs on my own car or at least know enough not to get ripped off by a shady mechanic. Throughout my high school career, there always seemed to be room to take another vocational class, like welding.

  Once I came to the realization that I wanted to farm, those classes actually paid off. Not only did I learn to fix a few things, but I also felt comfortable hanging out with and learning from the older, chaw-spitting farmers who became my impromptu mentors. Sometimes the best gifts don’t come in little boxes with nice little bows; sometimes they wear dirty coveralls and say things that’d make your grandma blush.

  There are plenty of places to learn how to fix farm equipment aside from seasoned vets (although that’s really where it’s at). Many community colleges have vocational-education courses in mechanics and welding. The local tractor dealers, where I’ve found myself more than once, are a valuable resource. Generally, the mechanics there don’t mind answering some of my questions.

  Besides my roundabout education, I’d say my next best investment has been in tools. Whether it’s a mechanic’s bill or an invoice for a good ratchet set, it can be written off on my taxes. A good set of tools, along with a bit of education, will serve me for a lifetime. Trust me — if you plan on farming for your lifetime, you’ll need both.

  I get the hoses put in place and tightened up. I turn the old gal over a few times, and vroom, black particles sprinkle the air. I inspect the job and I’m pleased; no more leaks, and neither the patient nor the doctor is the worse for it. Although I usually don’t walk away from any task looking clean and tidy, today my tools and my experience have served me well.

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t fix everything. Usually I know when something is beyond my skills and that I must enlist the help of someone with much stronger magic than I have. Fortunatel
y, by keeping up with routine maintenance and dealing with small problems before they become bigger (and more expensive), that doesn’t happen often.

  Today I’m victorious, and I ride my iron steed, breathing diesel smoke and not leaking hydraulic fluid, off into our next season.

  * * *

  A good set of tools, along with a bit of education, will serve me for a lifetime. Trust me — if you plan on farming for your lifetime, you’ll need both.

  * * *

  The Right Tool for the Job

  * * *

  BY BRAD HALM

  A small garden at the Homestead, an experiential living option at Denison University, was the spark for Brad Halm’s interest in growing food. After working on organic farms around the Midwest, he moved to Washington state to help Colin McCrate start the Seattle Urban Farm Company. He’s been building urban farms ever since.

  * * *

  Tools are now and have always been vital to farming: They’re how we interact with the land to get things done. Whether it’s a stirrup hoe or a cultivating tractor, our favorite tools become extensions of our bodies, as we use them again and again.

  We farmers have a very interesting relationship with our tools. Nowhere have I seen more random and unlikely materials become useful tools than on a farm. As a group, farmers seem to be driven by the ethics of rugged individualism, frugality, and independence, and there’s no way in hell we’re going to pay $59.99 for something we can make for free from scavenged materials from around the farm (even if it takes us two weeks to make it).