Jonathan Dysinger

AdAgrA 2015: Restoring the Waste Places

Breakout Session 4

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Tools of the Trade: Tools and Techniques for Increased Productivity and Efficiency

And for recording purposes, the date is November 13.

So let's have a prayer before we get started.

Definitely, Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity to come together and talk about the exciting topic of farming and the tools that we need to do the job efficiently.

I ask that you would bless us and help us to have a wonderful rest of the day.

It's impossible to do them all in an hour.

So we're going to get just a few of them, and if you have any questions, feel free to interject at any time pretty much.

I'll ask if anybody has questions throughout the time, but if you have 1, just raise your hand.

So, efficiency on the farm is largely about having the right tools to get a job done.

If you don't have the right tools to prepare a bed, it may take you just twice as long, 3 times as long.

So I've kind of broken down different categories.

We have bed preparation tools, seeding tools, weeding, and harvesting tools.

The broad fork is probably, well it's very important, especially when you're getting started, to loosen up your soil.

Spading fork, sorry, broad fork's the next 1, I'm looking at the wrong slide.

Spading fork's real important for loosening up hard soil.

We have used these for hours and hours, just breaking up soil that hasn't been grown on before, maybe stuff that's very hard packed.

Now, I'm gonna be, Julia, I'm gonna be like moving around.

I guess I need to hold the mic a little bit maybe.

It would've been nice to have a pinned on 1, but we'll just go with this.

So I have a lot of these tools up here, and you can come and play around with them after the fact, but this is the spading fork.

And there's lots of different kinds you can get, but you want to get a really heavy duty hand forged 1.

If you just get like a form steel 1, they bend, the tines bend really easily and they just won't hold up.

So, hand forged spading fork is the best.

And so you would just stomp on it and just go back and forth across your bed and take, you know, 3 or 4 inches at a time and just work your way back, just pushing it in, pulling back.

Once you have done that a few times and your soil's looser, then you can move to a broad fork, which is wider, and you can do the whole bed in 1 pass.

But when your soil's loose, you can just push all those tines in and then pull backwards and loosen up the soil.

So, once you've done that, the next step that we do is with the three-tooth cultivator.

We put our amendments on, shake your compost out over the bed, and then run over it with the three-tooth cultivator, kind of integrating that amendments and the compost into the soil.

And the three-tooth is a pretty heavy-duty tool here, And you can even use it for kind of breaking up some clods.

If you have some clods, you can kind of hit them with this and bust them up a little bit.

This just kind of goes 3 or 4 inches into the top layer of the soil and mixes everything up real nicely.

So our next 1 would be the 30 inch bed preparation rake.

This is a really great tool, especially if you're doing direct seeding.

It's real important for your soil and your bed to be very smooth with not a lot of clumps.

If you're transplanting, you can work around those a little bit with a fork or a trowel, a transplanting trowel, but if you're direct seeding with some seeders we're gonna talk about here in a bit, it's very important for the bed to be smooth and get the rocks and clumps out.

So this is a very lightweight aluminum rake, 30 inches wide, that Johnny's sells.

We have kind of a handout here that talks a little bit more about these and where you can get some of them.

So you can see there, he's just kind of bent over.

That looks a little bit awkward, but it's got a nice long handle, so you can reach out and just pull it along your bed and get it all smooth.

The other cool thing about the bed preparation rake is you can take just some short pieces of like pex tubing and put it onto the tines for kind of, using for marking your planting spacing.

But you would just put these on, say you were doing 3 rows of like lettuce plants.

Push these on and then run down your bed like this and it marks evenly your spacing.

So you go down lengthwise and then you can also go crossways to kind of create a grid for planting.

So that's really, really neat kind of multiple purpose tool that we use a lot on our farm.

All right, so mostly what we're gonna be talking about is hand tools like this, but I can't help but mention some of the power tools, and this one's 1 that we've started using a lot on our farm, the Power Harrow.

You can also get ones to go behind a small tractor.

But it incorporates, it kind of does everything that we've just talked about all in 1 pass.

It has vertical tines that rotate, and I think they say about 6 inches into the soil, roughly.

Goes about 6 inches deep, and just kind of breaks up all your clots, mixes in, you know, you can put your compost and soil amendments down before you use this.

It mixes it all in, and then it has a roller behind that smooths the bed out and kind of compacts a little bit and just gives you a perfect seed bed.

So that's a really great tool, but they're fairly expensive.

And so if you're doing farming on more of a commercial scale the great thing to have but probably not something that your average home gardener would would shell out the money for.

It's a couple thousand for a new 1, yeah.

And of course, that's just the attachment.

Richard Daly has a booth over here, and he sells BCS equipment.

And so if anybody's interested in this more, he would be the 1 to contact.

We'd have to look at the schedule, but somewhere around 245.

He's gonna be doing a demonstration on a lot of different BCS equipment, and you can get all that information from him.

Alright, so now we're gonna move on to seeding, if there's no questions on the bed preparation.

Does anybody have questions on bed preparation tools?

All right, so we're gonna talk about a few different types of seeders.

So, we'll start with the Earthway Seeder.

It's got a lot of pros and cons, I guess.

It works well for large seeds, like corn and peas and beets.

But it doesn't work well for small seed, like lettuce or anything like that.

It just kind of jams up with the small seed.

It's really affordable, $109 at Johnny's.

I think you can get it cheaper than that other places as well.

It digs a furrow, drops the seeds in, covers it over, and then the rear wheel kind of compacts the soil again a little bit.

And then it also has a row marker that you can adjust so as you're seeding your first row, it marks your second 1 so that when you go back, you have a mark to follow, so you have even spacing.

So, it's a good tool for the price, but if you're getting into commercial farming, you'd probably want to get something a little more advanced.

1 neat thing about them is you can do like, this person's done and kind of daisy chain them, so this guy has 4 together for being able to plant more in 1 pass.

So, we still use it a little bit on our farm, I think, don't we?

For beans, yeah, beans, stuff that's a larger seed, it works well.

The other 1 we'll talk about is the Haas seeder.

Now, We have actually not used this, but we've heard a lot of good things about it, and if you look at it, it just seems like it's very well constructed.

Seems to be well built, and the people that have used it seem to love it.

Preparing to Make the Jump

Agriculture

Basic Farm Tools

The first important thing that I'm still trying to learn, everybody I know is still trying to learn, and that is put it back when you're done with it.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Everybody's had that experience when you're trying to find something and you know you just had it but you can't find it.

And that is, there's a simple solution to that and that is when you're finished with it put it back.

But you can't maintain order like that unless you have a place designated for every tool.

So that's super important and something that you have to continually work on.

I know I find myself in situations where you're halfway through a project and it's, you know, end of the day, but you think, well, I'll just leave my tools here, I'll start up next day.

Well, then something inevitably happens and then you're trying to figure out where you left your tools.

It's always a good practice to put stuff away at the end of the day, clean it up, and that way it's ready to use.

We're going to go over a few different tools that are not gardening related tools.

We're going to touch on mechanic tools, which If you don't know what I mean by that, we'll get to it.

Cordless drills and drivers, that's something that's super important.

Everybody should have cordless set of tools.

Chainsaw, because that's going to be important Anytime you need to cut a tree or clear a fence or clear some branches that fell in your driveway, you need a chainsaw.

A wheelbarrow or a wagon, that's going to be something that's pretty important because You can only carry so much by hand, but if you have something to push or haul, that's something you definitely need.

We're not gonna go into detail about wheelbarrows because everybody knows what a wheelbarrow is and what it looks like.

The only thing I would say with wheelbarrows is get a wheelbarrow that has a flat free tire because that's just 1 less thing you have to worry about.

Although we do have 1 that that has a pretty stout plastic, but it's it's probably not going to last as long It'll it'll fatigue in the Sun over over a period of time.

So yes, definitely Definitely solid wheels that don't require you to you know patch flats or you know fill them up Another thing that can be really handy with wheelbarrows is 2 wheel on the front because then you don't have to worry about balance as much.

You can get more weight in it and focus all your energy on just lifting and pushing rather than trying to balance it.

So, couple things on wheelbarrows, but we're not gonna go any farther into that because it's pretty basic.

And then the last thing that I have on the list, and if anybody has something they have specific questions about, like I said, we're not gonna wait to the end, just raise your hand.

If we're gonna talk about it later, I'll tell you.

But weed eaters are something that is important.

But once again, lawn mowers, just buy a decent lawn mower.

I'd be happy to give recommendations on what I feel like is a good lawnmower.

But weed eaters are important because, especially gardening, you have to keep weeds down.

That's super important because If you have weeds that grow up and and seed You know the weeds can the weed seeds can blow a long distance into your garden, so we try to keep all around our fields mode and weed eating and So that's that's an important thing and There are definitely large differences in quality between 1 and the other different types.

I apologize, this is a really low quality picture I grabbed off of the internet.

Basically a mechanic's tools are your sockets, wrenches, Allen wrenches, screwdrivers, all that kind of stuff is mechanics tools, and there's a huge variety of You know different quality and price range and all I have buddies who invest a tremendous amount of money into like Snap-on tools that kind of the high-end a lot of really nice mechanic shops are going to use snap-on I have used them, but personally I can't justify spending $10, 000 on a set of tools.

The nice thing about them is they have lifetime warranty.

If anything ever breaks, you just take it back and can replace it.

But this picture is actually a basic set of cobalt tools from Lowe's and that's personally what I have.

They're good quality and The great thing about them is, at least for me, we have a Lowe's in the nearest town to us and they have a lifetime warranty as well.

If you break anything, all you got to do is walk in, take another 1 off the shelf, go to the customer service and they just swap it out.

That negates the snap-on thing where, well, it has lifetime warranty.

We got lifetime warranty with these and you can buy a complete set.

Normally like I think $280, but I got it for under $200.

And it's a complete set of sockets all the way from like inch and a quarter down to the smallest.

A complete set of wrenches, and it's just really a complete set of tools.

I mean the comparable like if you priced out the same tools that came in that set to snap on literally it would be thousands.

And so this is important because anything even around the home you need tools like this But especially on a farm You know you maybe you buy some some hand tools from from Johnny's and you got to put them together And there's stuff that has to be tightened Screws that have to be put in so so you definitely need a set of tools like this It's not something you might you maybe will be using all the time But if you have something and you you always have them organized, they're always there when you need them.

So definitely recommend a good set of mechanics tools and the Cobalt brand.

We manufacture and so I got a lot of different stuff.

But this 1, I just actually got these last week.

You can definitely get cheaper ones, but they just aren't gonna hold up as well.

They make them with Hammer drill features where it'll actually kind of hammer fords and backwards while you're drilling That's only needed if you're doing like concrete really and so and it adds a lot of extra weight to a drill So I personally do not own 1 and I would not recommend purchasing 1 unless you're doing concrete or rock or like something like that that you're trying to drill into.

So these are a new kind that Dewalt just came out where they're brushless motors.

If you have it in the budget, I would highly recommend paying the extra 50 bucks for a set of the the XR model D waltz These are 20 volt they come in 12 volt but not the brushless I think the brushless are only in the 20 volt So I thought I'd just show these off and any of you guys are more than welcome to come up and look at them after the class.

This can do almost really everything that this can do.

It's just that there's certain things that this impact driver can do better than this.

If you're building a bunch of greenhouses and you want to put in a bunch of tech screws, the impact driver is going to work way better.

If you were setting up a little 1 like we have out here, you can get the job done with this.

It's just a little bit more, it would take a little bit longer.

You can get impacts, especially like air ratchets, that you can set the torque setting on, but they're extremely expensive.

So these, no, you would just control that by the amount of like strength you put on the trigger and then there's no way to really tell that.

Next thing we're going to go into is chainsaws.

So like I said, everybody needs a chainsaw if you're living in the country.

You got to be able to clear, brush, and well, you know, chainsaw is not really brush, but I mean if it was small trees and stuff which you know you're gonna get or or cutting firewood actually we personally do not cut our own firewood we are in a really nice situation and I would encourage anybody to research.

We have a, like 30 minutes from us, a big pallet manufacturer and they have, they get logs basically already cut into rectangle sizes and then they have to cut the ends off to get them to the right length.

And so we end up with a bunch of wood that's like yay long all the way up to yay long, about that big around, just perfect firewood.

And we can get it so cheap that for the house, what did you guys spend, like maybe 100 bucks to heat for the whole winter, like 2 big loads of wood.

And so you just, you can't cut wood and split it yourself that cheap.

And so look around, I mean, there's pallet manufacturers all over, so you might have a sawmill.

We can also, from a local sawmill, get slabs for like 12 bucks for a big bundle but they're not as good for firewood because it's mostly bark or a large part of its bark.

Look around because cutting your own firewood is a lot of work and it's dangerous.

It's not really logging, but logging is the most dangerous occupation.

My dad would not let me run a chainsaw until I had read the manual front to back.

They are dangerous and there is A lot of different things you need to know about them, you know how to cut you know you don't want to hit the tip of the saw on anything or else it can kick back and And and then also, you know safety precautions wear chaps I'm telling you to do it because I've cut my pants and I try to do it.

We also have like helmets with kind of like a face mask that will keep limbs and stuff.

My dad was cutting stuff 1 time and got a branch right in his eye and that was not good.

He had, I think he scratched his eye somehow.

AdAgrA 2018: Something Better

Session 4

Joshua Dysinger

Season Extension: Low-tech Methods & Materials

Alright, so my name is Joshua Dysinger and I have grown up farming in Middle Tennessee.

We have mostly done winter, well probably, I don't know about mostly, but we've been doing winter CSA and winter growing for the last, I don't know, 12 to 14 years.

And in the last 3 years I have been doing it myself and my parents have been doing the summer growing.

To start out on the on this session I would just say that if you're interested in growing in the winter and if you're going to be Moving into that I would highly encourage you to get Elliot Coleman's winter harvest book, which I'm sure we have at the At Agri table, but you know, we're not really going into the details today.

We're talking about infrastructure mostly.

So when it comes to temperatures and just real details on that, his book has all kind of charts and very helpful on the nitty-gritty on winter growing.

So we're just gonna mostly be talking about infrastructure today.

We are talking about growing winter crops.

We're not talking about extension for tomatoes and green beans and summer crops.

So your crops in the winter are going to be different than your crops in the summer.

So That's just something to keep in mind with the winter extension.

And this is just a list of some of the winter crops.

It has kale, but the whole Brostica family is pretty winter hardy.

And that also is something that the Alec Coleman book will go into is crops in the winter.

So where it says the most difficult, lettuce, chard, radishes, turnips, carrots, you know it is like more hardy and all, but even all of those, I'm growing all of those right now.

We had, 2 weeks ago we had 0 degree temperatures.

So they're more difficult, but they're still very winter hardy and great winter crops.

Whereas the most hardy, you know, spinach and kale will take it colder and is less to cover.

So the first layer of protection that we would use, the first infrastructure would be row covers.

And that's a very simple just floating row cover.

There's different thicknesses, so the different, you know, Depending on your thickness would be dependent on your degrees of safety.

So it's going to be between 3 to 8 degrees warmer under your cover depending on the thickness of your cover.

An additional cover is going to add more protection than your first cover added.

So if your first cover is adding 5 degrees, your second cover is gonna add more than 5 degrees because of the air gap between your covers.

So If you have a 1 ounce cover and you have 2 on top of each other, that's going to offer more protection than a 2 ounce cover on its own.

Because of the gap, the air gap, it's more of an insulation.

So 2 ounces, if it's split into 2 one-ounce covers, it's going to be more protection than a two-ounce cover.

And the 1 of the big challenges in the winter is that we've had is with fungus and mold and stuff in our area will be real damp all winter and so you start getting just real issues with our lettuce with downy mildew and that kind of stuff.

We can struggle a lot in the winter with that.

So the easiest way to combat that is to uncover every chance you get.

If you're inside a greenhouse, if you're covering inside a greenhouse, you want to uncover on almost every single sunny day, whether it's 10 degrees outside, it's going to be warm enough in your hoop house.

And it's nice to have thermometers, you know, even if it's nothing fancy, just a little thermometer in your hoop house that you can see when it gets above freezing.

But it's going to get above freezing if the sun's shining pretty much no matter the temperature outside.

So as soon as it gets above freezing, you want to uncover and let the sun dry out your plants.

And then it also helps with heat through the next night.

So if your ground is heating up by the sun throughout the day, then In the night you're going to have that heat from the ground, whereas if you're covered up the sun's not really getting to the ground and you're not really creating that heat mass in the ground.

If it's outside you struggle more with uncovering because you can't really uncover if it's not going to get above freezing.

If you're multiple layers then potentially you could uncover some of your layers and it's going to let more sun in than… What keeps the space between the row covers?

The question was what keeps the space between the row covers and for most questions we want to keep them to the end so at the end of the class we should have some time for questions but on that it's just they're just light floating row covers and they're not just going to pack together.

So there's always going to be space between them.

Yeah, if you have snow on them, you're going to.

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Jonathan Dysinger

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