In article ,
Nad R wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
Nad R wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
Nad R wrote:

If you have money to burn about $50k. How about a small compact
tractor.
They can mow the lawn, can add a five foot tiller, front loader,
remove
the
snow, rear baggers for lawn clippings and small enough to fit in your
garage. About the size of mid size car.

Easy on the back but hard on the wallet.

You have a wallet? A little ostentatious, don't you think, or is it
just
an heirloom?

Doing my gardening with newspapers, alfalfa, a pointy stick, and sweat.
Total cost $18.


"Tickle the earth with a hoe, it will laugh a harvest."
- Mary Cantell

When gas gets much higher, I will have get out my scythe.

For those with health problems a pointy stick may not do the job.
The soil is soft from having been groomed for years, so pretty much all
I have to do with the stick (old shovel handle actually) is to lean on
it some to make a hole that the seedling will go into. The newspapers
and mulch get rid of the weeds, so there is no weeding. They actually
become part of the mulch. The drip irrigation is already laid out, but I
have the occasional repair to make which is no big thing, cut, insert a
barbed connector, insert barb into new length of drip emitters, and I'm
back in business. I normally put tomato arbors over my plants to protect
them, which is just habit from when I had two young dogs that would dash
from one side of the yard to the other, heedless of prized plants. Last
year, I used clear plastic to cover the beds of the tomatoes and
peppers. This year, for the beds that don't get plastic, I covered them
with chicken wire to discourage ol' rascally raccoon. As you can see, it
isn't brute force. It's time and patience. Tractors may allow you to do
more in a shorter amount of time, but they have their maintenance too.
Where I live isn't flat. It seems that every year, some one who has been
driving tractors forever, manages to roll one down a slope. Not pretty.

Machines can be dangerous if used improperly, Including cars.

My soil is in bad shape. I use raised beds for the veggie garden. Fifty
years or more of modern farming techniques before I purchased the land. I
like where I am at. The soil is better now under my care. I have more
years
to go for improvement and In the mean time the heavy equipment helps.

Are you tilling the soil?


For some reason, Nad, I thought of you ;O)

"The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there."
- George Bernard Shaw

Shaw, like Mark Twain wasn't very religious. Like "The poor cannot afford
morals".
They seem to be even too expensive for the rich as well.

Some, not much tilling. Spreader for the manure and compost. Trailer for
the free compost down the road, seems to be good stuff, all grass clippings
and leaves from the city. Snow plowing for those one foot snow falls. Front
loader for hauling hay to feed the cow. The tractor itself is slightly
smaller than my twelve year old single cab Dodge Dakota.

How was last years harvest, and what are you planting this year?
Anything new? Any changes to your garden?


If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), then thank a labor union.
They paid for it in blood. Real working class heros.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair


=
--
- Billy
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8559254-11yearold-takes-on-genetically-modified-food-producers-video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug