The Contrary Farmer

by Gene Logsdon

  erosion on his hills than in "no-till" fields where herbicides are used to kill plant growth and then crops are planted down through the residue of the killed plants without disturbing the soil. When I saw him at a horse-plowing contest this spring, he told me that early on, when he was disputing the claimed advantages of chemical-soak notill farming over his method, the no-till champions from Ohio State University took him to task for plowing and row-cultivating steep hills. The county agent came to Monroe's defense and pointed out that observations and soil samples taken from Monroe's steep, contoured hills indicated very little, if any, erosion. Also no compaction, which would be rarely true in no-till farming, and a very high organic matter content. Of course everyone who knows Monroe Miller knows that would be the case or he wouldn't farm those hills.

  • You will need a broadcast seeder. You can get large PTO-driven ones for the tractor, but the little, over-the-shoulder model is big enough for the small farm.

  • Unless you are young, strong, very talented with a scythe and have less than an acre of hay, you will need a sickle bar mower for cutting hay and a rotary mower for clipping meadows. You could get by with only a sickle bar mower if you keep the blade sharp. With some of the new rotaries designed for hay, like the "Worksaver Haymaker" (Litchfield, Illinois 62056) you could possibly get by with only a rotary mower, but I think it wise to have both if you can afford to. Both are available new or used to fit three-point hitch systems. Flail mowers and the new drum disk mowers are wonderful but more expensive than a cottage farm can normally justify.

  Not so incidentally, for understanding and maintaining sickle bar mowers and the whole range of older farm machinery, John Deere put out a book for many years called The Operation, Care, and Repair of Farm Machinery. I have the fifteenth edition and the twenty-fifth edition and guess that they were published about 1937 and 1947. Copies of this book constantly pop up in used book stores and antique shops. The machinery described is all John Deere, but the discussions and drawings are detailed enough that you can apply the information to other makes and models. I always read through this manual enviously because the horsedrawn and tractor-drawn machinery discussed in these editions would be perfectly apt for the cottage farm today.

  • You will need a hay rake. Older ones regularly sell at farm sales for under $50.

  • You can harvest hay loose the low-cost way as I describe in chapter 10 for small acreages, or, for over about five acres of hay, get a baler. If I used a baler, I would prefer one of the models that make small rectangular bales, not the ones that roll up big round bales. The latter cannot be moved by hand and are usually stored outside, which means the outer layer of hay deteriorates. Steve Gamby, a neighboring dairy farmer, tells me that he thinks the small bales are better for small operations and generally provide a higher-quality hay.

  • A manure spreader is almost a necessity. Used ones are available generally at a big advantage in price over new ones.

  • I discuss grain harvesters in chapter 10. You can hand harvest the corn from a small acreage, but any other kind of grain in fields larger than a garden plot will require a mechanical harvester. Consider first having a custom harvester do the job, meaning a farmer in the neighborhood with the right equipment. A second alternative would be to buy a used combine as I have done. Ten- to thirteenfooters (the width of the swath they cut) in the self-propelled category are obsolete in commercial farming, used now only for combine demolition derbies. I often muse on that tragi-comedy. Most of those combines were never paid for: bought with borrowed money and traded in on bigger ones with more borrowed money. Now they are "worthless," the debt hanging over them to be paid by a future generation. No wonder firm boys in demolition derbies crash them to smithereens with such glee. I think deep in their souls they know they've been had.

  An old obsolete combine still in fair shape can be purchased for about $2000 if you wait for the proper chance. However, unless you are as lucky as my nephew, most of these combines are about worn out and will need considerable repair. Two years ago at the Gathering of the Orange, the annual antique Allis Chalmers fair, there were two pull-type, restored AC All-Crop combines for sale at under $1000. Since new parts are still available for the All-Crop, these combines are good buys. Mine, which I purchased for $50, has served me in good stead for twelve years. It rolled off the assembly line in 1948.

  • Fencing tools are a necessity for all farms with livestock, especially where intensive grazing is practiced. If you prefer woven wire fences for your boundaries, you will need one or a pair of traditional fence stretchers, available new by mail from farm supply centers like Nasco Hardware (901 Janesville Avenue, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin 53538). Stretching with a tractor is not very satisfactory and can be dangerous. Great force is required to stretch a woven wire fence properly. I can tell you how to do it in writing, as I have done in my out-of-print book, Practical Skills, but you will have to learn how to do it, hands on, from someone in the flesh. The critical art is all in setting the corner posts solidly enough, not in operating the stretchers. Stretch only in a straight line. Do not try to go around curves. Always set a brace post with every end post, with a brace bar between them and a guy wire to tighten from the bottom of the cor- nerpost to the top of the brace post. There are other ways to make a corner post solid with bracing, but this double post arrangement, the posts about five feet apart, is easiest. End post and brace post should be sunk into the ground three and a half to four feet, with at least five feet of post above ground.

  Woven wire fencing comes in all kinds of heights and gauges (wire diameters). The top and bottom wire of your fencing should be the thicker 9 gauge diameter. The other wires should be no thinner than 11 gauge (the higher the number, the thinner the gauge). If you buy cheaper, thinner gauge you are throwing your money away. The width between the stay wires (the vertical wires) can be four inches, six inches, or eight inches. If you use the better (and more expensive) four-inch stay size, get it with the graduated spacing between the longitudinal wires, narrower at the bottom so little pigs and lambs can't get through, and so ewes can't get their heads caught in it. The cheapest worthwhile fencing I have found measures fortytwo inches high with an eight-inch stay, top and bottom wires 9 gauge, the other wires 11 gauge. Sometimes at the farm supply store, I have to root through the rolls of fencing to find this combination. Do not expect help from salespeople, because no one knows anything about woven wire fencing anymore.

  The higher the copper content in the wire, the longer it will last and the more expensive it will be. Most of the chain farm supply stores (like TSC and Quality Farm and Fleet here in northern Ohio) don't even carry the high-copper-content fence (like the better kinds of Red Brand) but if you can get it reasonably, the higher price pays. Why put up cheap fence considering the work you put into it?

  At almost every farm sale an old set of fence stretching tools will sell cheaply because livestock farmers are turning mostly to various types of electrified fence that require no heavy power stretching. Some farmers prefer to put up three to five strands of barbed wire, stretching each strand individually. This can be done with a block and tackle or the singlestrand "one-man" stretcher, available from mail order farm supply houses. I know that Lehman Hardware (P.O. Box 4779, Kidron, Ohio 44636) carries the one-man stretcher, and this store sells nationwide by mail. Every cottager should have Lehman's unique "non-electric" catalog anyway. A steel fence post driver is a necessity, and a fence post digger, too, for wood posts. You can rent power hole diggers.

  I use a hand-powered post hole digger. I build about two hundred feet of fence a year on the average, and don't need any more speed than muscle power. Muscles are so much quieter than gas - gulpers.

  The topic of fencing always gets me embroiled in argument with other livestock farmers. Many say New Zealand-type electric fence is cheaper and easier to put tip than traditional woven wire. Being contrary, I of course disagree. Traditional woven wire fences, built right, last thirty years, and I don't
know of any New Zealandtype fence that has yet been up nearly that long in this climate, so how does anyone know its better? And by the time you buy all the doo-dad connections, insulators, and individual wire tighteners you need for New Zealand type fence, I'm not sure its that much cheaper or faster to erect either. The only advantage to New Zealand fencing is that it is readily available in all kinds of varieties, and with ample instructions on how to erect it.

  But assuming these new electrified fences are cheaper than new woven wire fencing, my comeback is that I don't use new posts and wire when I build a traditional woven wire fence. Thanks to the great Interstate Highway System, there is always someplace within hauling distance where the fencing along the highways is being replaced-miles and miles of it. A wonderful opportunity, because most of this fencing still has fifteen to twenty years of life in it, maybe more, and it is far better fencing than any new stuff farmers can afford. It is made of all 9 gauge wire and corrosion resistant steel. The steel posts the state uses (good old tax money) are also far superior to any you can buy on a mere taxpayer budget. The first load of this super-duper fencing I got for nothing, but the compa- flies tearing down the wire quickly caught on so now they charge a little for it. Nevertheless it is still a great bargain.

  For end posts and wooden line posts I have secured permission to chain saw discarded electric-line posts at the local utility station into proper lengths (seven to eight feet) and then split them into two, four, six, or eight posts, depending on their size. Working leisurely, I can make twenty-four posts in an afternoon that are of far better quality than the wooden fence posts you buy for $3 to $5 each. Unsplit, the butts of these poles make terrific end and corner posts, much more durable than the $12 to $15 end posts sold for this purpose. Best wages I make all year.

  The upshot is that I have fencing which, now that I have taught myself the fine points of fencebuilding, will stay horse high, bull strong, and hog tight for a quarter century for very little money. And I don't have to worry about the electric fence shorting out and the livestock stampeding away with nothing to stop them between here and Chicago except the fencing along the superhighways.

  • If you cut wood for fuel, you need a chain saw, an axe, a peavey, two wedges, and a steel splitting maul. A gas-gulping splitter is nice and noisy but not necessary. A splitter that runs off the hydraulic power of your tractor is much better, but also not necessary until you get too old to swing a splitting maul. Use the wood you can't split by hand for fireplace back logs or for boiling off maple syrup and lard in open kettles.

  • If your farm is in an area like ours where the clay soils drain poorly, and you absolutely need tile drainage at least in the wetter places, you might find that an investment in tile trenching spades is a good idea. Hand-digging tile ditches is hard work, and if you have more tile to put in than, say, two hundred feet a year, you will probably want to get a knowledgeable drainage contractor with a power ditcher to do the work. A power ditcher digs deeper and therefore does a better job of preparing for drainage than you can do by hand. But I learned this spring that digging three hundred feet of tile trench about two feet deep was not that physically difficult after all. If at sixty-one I can dig that much in my spare time in April, younger people ought to be able to do six hundred. It's kind of pleasant work in a way, what I call pure relief work: Mostly muscle, very little brain.

  • I use a shovel or spade to cut weeds out of the pasture. Easier, it seems to me, than using the more traditional hoe for this job. With one thrust you can sever the tap root of a bull thistle, mullein, sourdock, or burdock. Swinging with the hoe usually takes at least two whacks. But my cousin Raymond in his old age devised a neater way to cut pasture weeds with the hoe. He sawed the handle off his hoe half way down, mounted his trusty riding lawnmower, and set sail across the meadow in high gear in pursuit of weeds. As he passed them, he would swing his short hoe viciously at the base of the weed, decapitating it without stopping. He reminded me of an old polo player not quite ready to give up the game.

  • Time was when I would have put the rotary tiller at the top of the list of cottage farm tools. I am not so sure anymore because rotary tillers stir up the soil so much, like an eggbeater. Still, the rotary tiller is the best tool for small plots unless you prefer spading and working the ground with hand tools. Hand tools are better for small, raised beds. Rotary tillers are excellent for light weed cultivation and for breaking up clods.

  • Pitchforks are still needed on cottage farms and not just for running off unsolicited salespeople. I use a four-tined manure fork even for hay, although for hay a regular, three-tined hay fork is better. It is lighter and slides into and out of the hay easier. I also have a large, four-pronged fodder fork that is good for handling leaves, cornstalk shreddings, and grass hay cut with the rotary mower. I also find frequent use for a large fork of heavy tines positioned very close together. I call it a cob fork but have heard it referred to as a stone fork and as an ear corn fork. I use it to clean up the manure that is too fine for the regular manure fork. It works especially well to handle composted chicken manure or any other compost.

  • If you raise grains, you will want a grain scoop shovel and probably a bushel basket or two. We buy rubber buckets occasionally to carry feed to the livestock and chickens, and latch onto plastic buckets originally used for other products. I am always on the lookout for free steel barrels for water or grain storage. As a general rule, cottage farmers will beg, borrow, or steal any bucket-sized container that comes their way. There is always a use for these and they are continually rusting through or cracking.

  • You will need a lawnmower unless you can maneuver in your yard with your farm tractor and field rotary mower. The smaller the lawn, the better, I say, but we have a huge one at present. I intend to put a fence around most of it and graze sheep there. (Carol doesn't know that yet.) A small lawn can be mown with a push mower. There is nothing more ludicrous in the modern world than the person who rides an $8000 power mower around a postage stamp lawn on Saturday morning and then tries to jog off the fat on Saturday afternoon.

  • Buildings are tools. I think a heated repair shop is among the best tools a farm can be equipped with, because then you can use winter hours comfortably and even pleasantly for the unending and immensely money-saving tasks of machinery repair.

  I've described our corn crib and grain bins, hog and chicken sheds. If you intend to raise animals, buying a homestead with an old barn on it saves yourself a lot of money. Buying lumber today is almost as expensive as buying silverware. Even broken-down barns contain a lot of good wood that can be reused. Our barn has parts of two older barns in it. A neighbor did one better: purchased a building elsewhere, sawed it in two, moved the sections to his barnyard with tractor and trailer, and put it back together again.

  Moving buildings is an old tradition around here, for in truth, lumber has always been high-priced for thrifty people. Two homes within a mile of us were moved in, and another was turned around, heaven only knows why. Two miles south, there's a machine shed in a barnyard that was formerly a church in a nearby village. The village has long since disappeared. On the next farmstead east, the barn is constructed of lumber that carne from our first courthouse, torn down in 1900. Rural communities were recycling before the word was invented because they couldn't afford not to. We have a waste management problem today simply because there is too much money for new products in circulation.

  How you arrange your barn depends on what you are going to raise in it, of course. Looking back now in hindsight, my advice is to make very few partitions, hay mangers, and pens until you actually start keeping animals in the barn and your needs become apparent. Best to have two floors, a hay loft above, with holes through which you can shove hay to the mangers below and end doors through which to load hay into the loft. Go look at traditional barns for ideas. Older agricultural books and magazines, especially those published before 1920, sometimes contain great drawings of barn layouts and accessories. Th
e most instructive lesson I've received in this regard is to have witnessed an Amish barn raising. I truly doubt whether the most automated chicken factory in Arkansas is half as efficient as the way the traditional Amish barn is laid out for the care and feeding of farm animals by hand labor.

  • By all means keep a pair of pliers and a pocketknife in your pocket at all times, and a roll of baling wire close by. A beak-nosed fencing pliers is a blessing when repairing fence. You would be wise to buy seventeen hammers and thirty-three screwdrivers to strew around your property so that you can always find one when you need it. I often carry a magnifying glass in a sheath my daughter made for me. The original reason for the glass was to observe bugs up close as I worked in the garden or walked the fields. Lately though, I find the magnification a great aid when working on machinery. It's hell to get old.

  • Last but not least, keep a grease gun and an oil can handy. I am forever amazed by how often a malfunctioning tool or machine needs only lubrication to make it work right again. The worn bearings of old equipment especially need to be kept bathed in grease. There must be sixty grease zircs on my old grain combine (I've never counted them), and the fact that every one of them has received three or four pumps of grease from the grease gun before each day of use is the main reason that machine is still running half a century after it was manufactured. Years of life can be added to the steel parts of shovels, spades, cutter bars, disk blades, and plow moldboards if they are swabbed with waste oil between uses.