Homesteader’s Starter Pack #3: The Market Gardener
Once you’ve mastered gardening, have acquired all the necessary hand tools (see my homesteader's starterpack #2 post), and are ready to take it up a notch, you'll need to invest in some professional tools to really maximize your labor:production ratio. I do not own any of these, so this is more of a wish list for me. I've done a lot of reading, researching, and talked to a few of my farming friends; I would consider all of these essential tools if you are intending on growing the majority of your food or plan to make an income farming. I’m hoping to acquire these little by little as the finances allow and the need demands.
Tractor
Using traditional tractors with permanent raised beds isn’t really an option. Besides the size, the costs of a large tractor can be too much of an initial investment for beginner farmers. BCS offers a great solution perfectly sized and priced to handle permanent raised beds for the small farmer.
image courtesy of bcsamerica.com
BCS Walk Behind Tractor Model 750
Flail Mower
I believe the best method of farming uses cover crops. Using cover crops on permanent raised beds with no tillage can be very challenging. The BCS tractor combined with their flail mower makes it possible, and allows you to pulverize cover crops fast, turning their top growth into a weed suppressing, moisture retaining mulch with little effort.
image courtesy of bcsamerica.com
Rotary Plow
This tool makes building your raised beds quick and efficient. Unless you want to spend days hand digging your raised beds, it’s a must.
image courtesy of bcsamerica.com
Greens seeder
If you’ve ever tried planting small seeded greens or vegetables, you know how difficult and time consuming the task can be. To get good germination and coverage without massive seed waste is next to impossible. The 6 row seeder is a priceless tool that allows you to cover a bed in two passes, creates a nice seed bed and soil to seed contact, and properly spaces your seeds without massive seed waste.
image courtesy of johnnyseeds.com
Checkout the 6 Row Seeder from Johnny's Seeds
Precision Seeder
You are definitely going to need a seeder for all your direct seeded medium and large seeds. Seed waste becomes a concern the more seed you need to purchase or save. The Jang TD1 is the industry standard for larger seeds and offers tons of customization.
image courtesy of johnnyseeds.com
Checkout the Jang TD-1 from Johnny's Seeds
Greens Harvester
Harvesting baby greens and cut and come again lettuce has been traditionally labor intensive. This tool is an absolute game changer for the small farmer and allows you to rapidly harvest a bed with little effort.
Checkout the Greens Harvester from Farmer’s Friend
Salad Spinner
Cleaning lettuce and greens can be a tiresome task, I’ve seen some modify washer machines to create massive automated spinners. For most of us, a 5 gallon spinner is sufficient.
image courtesy of farmersfriendllc.com
Checkout this 5 Gallon Salad Spinner from Farmer's Friend
Silage Tarp
The lazy man’s way of weeding and prepping beds. The tarp creates moist and warm conditions which encourage seeds to germinate and then smothers them dead. If you leave it on the ground long enough, you can turn established prairie and fallow land into soft weed free plots.
The famous urban farmer, Curtis Stone, explains their use very well in this video
Checkout the Silage Tarps from Farmer's Friend
Flame Weeder
If you’re in a rush and don’t have the time to let the tarp kill all the weeds, you can remove the tarp and flame all the young weeds that have emerged.
image courtesy of farmersfriendllc.com
Checkout this Flame Weeder from Farmer's Friend
Broadfork
The quintessential no till tool that allows you to loosen soil deep down without destroying the fungal networks, and soil horizons.
image courtesy of johnnyseeds.com
Checkout this Broadfork from Johnny's Seeds
Greenhouse or high Tunnel
More infrastructure than tool, this is a necessity if you live in northern climates. Starting thousands of plants won’t be very cost effective under lights, or possible by a window.
image courtesy of farmersfriendllc.com
These tunnels from Farmer's Friend are easy to setup and cheaper than most other greenhouse solutions.
Checkout these caterpillar tuneels from Farmer's Friend
Walk in Cooler
You can easily create one of these using some sheetrock, insulation, an A.C. unit and a clever gadget that tricks your A.C. into "thinking" it’s warmer than it says it is allowing it to run down to refrigerator temperatures.
image courtesy of amazon.com
If you like this type of thing, you can checkout the other starter packs in this series
Homesteader’s starter pack #1: The modern lumberjack
Homesteader’s starter pack #2: The Backyard Gardener
Hmmm, that's interesting. I've been sort of getting involved with farmers and permaculturists in southeastern Brazil, but they have a very different sort of set up. I've come back to Europe now and I'd be interested to connect with farmers and gardeners here... I found this post really intersting, cheers! Upvoted and followed :) Kate
I had never seen a seeder like that hand one before. This is a pretty cool post, thanks for sharing, wish I had a large enough garden area to grow commercially.
Yeah, that small seeder looks amazing. I haven’t grown a ton of lettuce, so it’s too much for me at the moment. But definitely would like to grab one in the future.
I have 18 acres but it’s pretty much all wooded. I’m hoping to expand little by little where I can have at least an acre of gardening space, and a couple acres of orchards. In the time I don’t have much more than 1/4 acre to work with.
I enjoyed reading and looking but I think most of these will be out of my homestead's price range. I do think that several can be designed by a homesteader and made for a good price which I enjoy! Thanks for getting my mind wondering, time to add a few more things to my project board!
Yeah, they are out of mine to. But they are on my wish list 😁 The broadfork definitely can be made yourself, Eliot Coleman has a walkthrough in one of his books. The tractor and attachments are really the biggest investment. But if you plan to sell commercially, all of this will pay for itself in a season from 1-2 acres. So considering, it’s still a much better investment than most farming methods and their set of tools, which take decades to pay off. If you do build any of these tools please post on Steemit. I’m sure we would all love to see the how to and result!
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STOPi really like your post. these tolls are going to make a farmers work easier. i wanna ask. are the picture yours?
have you made this post somewhere else
Thanks! The pictures all come from the store sites that are linked for each tool.
Good tools make the work easier. My favorite ones from your list are the seeders: simple mechanics, no fuel dependent engines, though I'm sure they do make a great difference in efficiency.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of gas guzzling engines myself. But they do make some things go a lot faster. If farming for a living, they allow you to cover a lot more ground without getting overwhelmed. The BCS tractors are light in comparison to other monsters. I can't wait until battery power becomes more powerful and affordable, then we could have the best of both worlds.
My backyard gardener starter pack post had all hand tools. The scythe, the shovel, and a lot of sweat can replace the BCS tractor.
Right on! Electric motors are amazing. I became convinced last year when I had the great pleasure to use an electric chainsaw. It worked like a charm, but a lot less noisy, less complicated (no mixing fuels, priming, yanking the cord, etc) and less messy than its fuel-burning counterparts. Best of all, it had a decent power in it for most of the work we were doing. Of course, felling a 100-year old hemlock you'd stick to the old-school ones. (Though word has it, stronger electric ones are being developed as we speak.)
Definitely! Did you see the GreenWorks Digi Pro 80v? It’s the most powerful battery electric chainsaw on the market now. Looks promising. Still can’t take down a 30” oak, but can handle 16-18” trees.
That seems to perfectly sufficient for most orchard / arbor work. Even for organizing building material for an upcoming earthship build, which was what we used it for, the small electric chainsaw was good enough. <-- This is an intentional plug, by the way. ;-) I expect to be writing lots of post on this subject next year!
This is amazing! I didn’t realize these tools even existed. My family has a small garden and a few chickens, but I’m sure when we buy more land I’ll come back to this post for reference. Awesome share, thank you!
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