A Farm Toolbox (a series previously published in parts)

Form, function, and beauty, that seems to be a common element of our farm toolbox. Most of the commonly used tools, with some exceptions, have all three elements in either their design or use. Like the person whose beauty is not apparent on first meeting, a good tool sometime reveals its beauty through prolonged use and acquaintance.

Pocketknives

Of all the items in our farm toolbox my pocketknife gets the most use. Just this morning it has been used to cut the twine off of a round bale of hay, sharpen a pencil and cut umbilical tape for sutures for a ewe’s prolapsed uterus. And it is not even noon.

Now one can’t claim that a pocketknife is solely the domain of farmers. But a knife, kept in good condition is in constant use. I’m frequently surprised by how many men and women do not carry one. Even off the farm it seems someone is always looking for or needing a knife. It has been my habit since a child to always have a good quality pocketknife. For most of my teenage years it was a Buck knife with three blades. The steel of the blade was and still is hard to sharpen.

Regardless, that Buck knife is practically indestructible. I lost it in the pig paddock, as I do all knives eventually, about ten years ago while we were castrating piglets. There it wintered and summered for a few years before another pig turned it up out of the muck. The rust was easily scoured off of the stainless steel. And it is still functional and still hard to sharpen.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the farm, deep in the muck, on top a fence post, I store other misplaced pocketknives, each waiting to be reunited with a pocket.

The Rock Bar

Archimedes may have had a rock-bar in mind when he postulated “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth with it.” It is a six-foot iron bar, weighing twenty pounds, with a round flat head on one end and a wedge on the other; a perfect combination of form and function.

A gift from Cindy, on our first Christmas at the farm in 1999, the rock-bar is an absolute essential in the farm toolbox. If you want a quick means test to separate the men from the boys, put a rock bar in their hands and step back and observe. We have had a lot of people volunteer to help on the farm over the years. Your average musclebound gym rat lasts about thirty minutes with the rock bar and indeed most farm work. Whereas that skinny wiry farm kid can use it all day.

Cindy and I can both speak with some authority, having dug hundreds of post-holes, of the accuracy in naming such a tool. When you have dug down through two feet of clay, only to hit a rock, the rock-bar is the only tool to shift it. Raising it high in the air, wedge side down, you bring it down with force, repeatedly. Like practice for a Russian gulag, you break big rocks into smaller rocks. It is hard work but intensely satisfying.

Once your hole is dug and your post is set, flip the bar over to the round edge. As dirt is added to the hole use a rhythmic pounding action to compact the dirt. It requires short brutal strokes around all sides of the post-hole. No substitute tool or action is as effective in firmly seating a post.

When not pulverizing big rocks into little rocks, the rock-bar moonlights as a lever. Got a stock trailer that needs to be shifted or a boulder that needs rolling up hill? It will do it and with minimal effort on your part. Seldom does a day go by without resorting to the rock-bar.

Form, function and even beauty come together when used by the right hands.

The T-Post Driver

When reaching for the t-post driver one knows they are in for a workout. A two-foot cast iron pipe, capped on one end, with handles on each side, it is used to drive a t-post into the ground. It weighs 25 pounds. A t-post is a steel post, typically six feet in length, used to support fencing such as barbed wire. Slip the driver over the post, level the post in all directions, then raise the driver up and bring it down with force. Repeat until the post is buried a foot in the ground.

Its design is simple, primitive, and highly effective. Brute energy directed on a single point accomplishes the task in short order. We have set over a thousand t-posts with the driver on our farm. Unlike its cousin the rock-bar, the driver has no other function. It hangs in the barn on its lonely hook for months at a time.

Many have been the day when, with the driver in one hand and several t-posts in the other, I’ve hiked a half-mile to a back fence. There to retire an old wooden post or two that had finally rotted away into mush. Or, other days, setting a new row of fifty posts, Cindy and I take turn pounding them into the dirt.

The act itself, the methodical raising and hammering down, is thoroughly satisfying. A release of accumulated aggressions into a constructive channel, where the ache between your shoulders the following day is an echo of work well done. And a sturdy fence, well made, is a reminder of the value in physical toil.

 A Dutch Hoe

It may sound like the start to a naughty joke, but my life really did improve when I brought home that Dutch hoe.

It has a six-foot-long ash handle extended with an eight-inch steel shank, and a half-moon hoe on the end. It has an elegant form and is effective when working through soils with good tilth. I can weed the garden for an hour without straining my back. 

The traditional style American hoe requires a rigorous up and down chopping that wears out the lower back and arms. Definitely useful with heavier soils. But for a garden where the soil has been improved with amendments and is easily worked, the half-moon hoe is a dream. The extra-length handle allows my 6’2” frame to stand upright. The cutting blade is angled so that with a motion like sweeping a broom I can cut through the soil and weeds.

The Dutch hoe is made by DeWit in Holland, and I purchased mine at a farmer’s conference a decade back in Chattanooga. A quick rub of linseed oil to the handle every few months and a quick sharpening after each use and this hoe should easily outlast me and my back.

I have a variety of hoes to choose from depending on the task at hand. The half-moon is the only one that is a pleasure to use.

My beautiful hoe.

The Japanese Digging Knife

We speak lovingly today of Japanese digging knives (Hori Hori). A garden tool I was unaware of before purchasing mine a decade back from Garrett Wade. The knives vary slightly in size and steel composition, and we have several. The blade is concave, about 6.5 inches long with one serrated side. It has a 5- inch wood handle. The edge and point are sharp and taper to a thick carbon steel body. The tang extends another 4 inches into the handle and is attached with two rivets.

The knife typically is sold with a leather sheaf. And on days devoted to the garden the knife remains attached in its sheaf on my hip when not being used. The digging knife has a real heft that is a pleasure to hold. The tapered point and blade edge, combined with the sturdiness of the design, cuts through all soil types. The serrated edge allows you to cut through small roots. Mine gets used primarily for planting transplants and removing stubborn weeds like plantains. It is also the tool that gets used on most foraging expeditions for wild herbs, perfect for digging out that six-inch dandelion taproot.

I prefer the warmth and softness of the carbon steel to the stainless-steel blades. They are easier to sharpen but do require more maintenance. To me that is an important and desirable trait. Stainless steel seems to invite a careless consumerist approach to tools, buy it and ignore it. Having a good tool is a partnership. And it only seems right to return its favors with a little linseed oil to the handle and a bit of machine oil on the blade.

Mattocks

This addition to the toolbox includes a “threefer”, a garden mattock, a weeding mattock and a pick mattock. These tools are pulled out of the toolbox when you are serious about the job at hand. Dirt will fly, pigweed will die and clay and chirt will disappear. Just make sure to mind the eyes when swinging the pick mattock.

Pick Mattock: this mattock has an adze on one end and a pick on the other. The mattock sits on a squat three foot handle. We use this to help start or finish digging out large holes. It is also used to excavate trenches. Stand in a wide stance over the hole, raise the mattock to a 45 degree angle and bring it down with force. Good things will happen.

Weeding Mattock: this mattock has a four-inch adze on one end and a two-inch adze on the other. It is attached to a long slender handle. This mattock is perfect for weeding in an established garden, an elegant tool that allows one to reach in among plants with ease. And with that long handle and light business end, I find that it makes light work in the garden of grubbing out intruders.

Garden Mattock: An adze on one end and a cultivator on the other, mounted on a short 12-inch handle this is a one-handed tool. This is my favorite tool to use when doing a quick weeding of the herb garden. Or one Cindy grabs to clean a flower garden. It has a real heft that allows the adze end to grub out serious taproots. And the cultivating end has tines that are strong enough to work in the toughest soils. A sweet tool made sweeter by the purchase cost of a couple of dollars on a clearance table.

The Pitchfork

Often the weapon of choice by angry peasants and fathers chasing away a daughter’s suitor, the pitchfork is part of our collective farm image. Picture Grant Wood’s American Gothic and you know the tool we speak of today. With a pitchfork in hand work will happen. And if you have chosen the right fork the work will happen more efficiently.

The pitchfork typically ranges from three-five prongs, with many exceptions. We have four pitchforks: one each for hay, manure, compost and a useless horse-stall fork.

The hayfork: a slender three prong fork with tines spaced a couple of inches apart. This is for moving loose dry hay. Amazing how much hay can be lifted and tossed with this fork. One of my favorites, I use it frequently in the barn. We keep a round bale of hay in one of the stalls. Once or twice a week, using the fork, I tear hay from the bale and spread it around the barn for fresh bedding.

The manure-fork: Each spring we clean out a years’ worth of bedding and manure. It is layered in the barn to a depth of about twelve inches. What the front-end loader cannot get, the four-prong manure-fork gets the rest. Not elegant, like the hayfork, but it gets the job done. The extra tines give it more surface area for lifting bedding and manure.

The compost-fork: very similar to the manure-fork but it has five tines. The design allows you to shovel into a compost pile with ease and turn it with minimal effort. Just remember to lift with the knees. The more tines on the pitchfork, the greater the load; and the greater the load the more risk to ones back.

The stall-fork: designed for hoity-toity horse barns with paved surfaces, it has a dozen plastic tines and is near useless for real work. We bought it our first week on the farm. It leads a lonely life in the back of the tool shed.

Auctions and antique stores usually have well-made pitchforks for bargain prices. Pick one up, use it on your farm. Or save it for the next suitor or politician who knocks on your door.

 A Spinning Jenny

The spinning jenny is not a perfect tool. Nor is it a beautiful tool. But it is a tool that is a delight to use if you value your back as much as I value mine.

The problem with starting farming at age 37 (15 years ago now) is that all of the commonsense things you’ve learned to date are no longer useful. Things like the best walking route through the neighborhood to get to Bill Meyer stadium for an evening baseball game, or the best time to get a seat at Harold’s Kosher Deli on Saturday morning…. All were now useless. All new knowledge was hard won.

So for the first couple of years farming we built fencing the old-fashioned way: with sheer brute strength, mostly mine. I’d pick up a 50-pound-plus roll of barbed wire to chest height and begin walking backwards. Hundreds of yards of the stuff, up and down hills, through woods and across sunny pastures, lift, step back and back, until the strand was stretched.

One day, talking with an old farmer, I pondered that it sure would be nice if there were some tool you could use to unspool barbed wire. He suggested I purchase a spinning jenny. I did that afternoon, for about $10. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.

Fencing is still hard work. But a spinning jenny makes the job easier, and that is what a good tool is supposed to do.

T-Post Jack

Fencing, that constant companion of all that we do on our farm, is made easier with the metal T-post—which itself is made easier to put in with a T-post driver and easier still to remove with the post driver’s first cousin, the T-post jack.

All fences that go up will someday come down. After some years of using brute strength to pull old T-posts from the ground, often finding them bent and unusable, I spotted this beauty at a local farm supply store.

Brilliant: a jack, one of the oldest of man’s tools, designed to tackle one of his oldest chores, fence building. Among the simplest mechanical devices invented for applying force to an object, the T-post jack makes lifting and removing T-posts remarkably effective and easy. A simple downward popping action on the handle and posts emerge from the ground a few inches at a time, straight and reusable.

And my back, likewise, remains straight and reusable.

Fence Pliers

Equipped with a beak like something evolved in the Mesozoic, the fence pliers are an essential tool in our toolbox. Never lonely for long, they are brought out several times a week. Even on a casual walk in the back forty to hunt rabbit, I’ll make room for a pair in a back pocket: sometimes, even the casual walk entails an unexpected spot of fence repair.

A classic tool designed for multiple uses, the fence pliers have beauty built into their design. The hinged head includes the beak on one side and a flat face on the other. The beak is perfect, using a hammer to strike the opposite face, for digging fence staples out of old wooden posts. The curvature allows the user to rock the pliers against the wood and ease out even the most stubborn of staples.

The toothed jaws are handy for crimping the wire in an old fence line. A crimp every couple of feet will tighten up the most sagging line. And that opposite end to the beak, the flat face, serves as a nifty hammer.

The handles, when pulled apart, expose a guillotine on the head that cuts barbed wire easily … if the user has purchased the correct pair. In the world of fence pliers, a standard cheap pair will cost about $12 and a lifetime of frustration. Splurge a little for a pair made by Diamond and you will thank me.

As our British cousins might say, fence pliers are a dead useful addition to any farm toolbox.

The above was a series published on this site in 2014. Today seemed a good time to pull them all together.

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Reading this weekend: The Classical Tradition in West European Farming (G. E. Fussell)