Hi I'm Heidi Rader here in the Alaska Garden.
I'm with UAF Cooperative Extension Service and Tanana Chiefs Conference.
I'm here in Homer, Alaska checking out all the cool things farmers are doing here
to extend the season, like high tunnels, hoop houses, low tunnels and also the
other cool tools they're using as small-scale farmers.
I'm here with Carey Restino at Homer Hilltop farm. She's gonna show us a lot of cool tools
she uses that are sustainable, designed for no- or low-till. The first thing she's
gonna show us is her Tilther.
Yeah, so I've really invested the last couple years in a few of these tools that have come out
and are helping a lot with small-scale farm operations. And this Tilther we use this especially for tilling in
amendments. You know if we're doing succession plantings - several plantings
over the year. And it only tills the first couple inches of the soil and it
mixes in the amendments without disturbing the lower structure.
And then that helps keep the seed bank undisturbed?
Right. The weed seed bank undisturbed and also the mitochondria and all the workings -
worms even - you want there - it doesn't disturb them. So it's a minimal till.
And it's really low-tech. It also - the handle, there's a string that operates
the handle and less parts to break is a good thing on a farm.
It just uses a regular drill you'd already have?
That's true, although you do want to make sure you don't over-use the drill so you'd give it a break between rows.
Okay. All right, here we go.
So that's how it works. And it give you a pretty awesome seed bed in which you can
do lots of different - use a lot of different seeders but some of the seeders
require the beds to be a little more tamped down before they can work.
And especially the six-row seeder which we use for all of our greens.
So this particular implement does a pretty good job of flattening the ground for us.
And what's this one called?
Uh, seed prep flattener? I'm not really sure what that
was but you can see it - and you can actually put weights on it too like a
concrete block, but it sort of just tamps the soil down. I'm just gonna move
this over here. It's pretty heavy.
And the implement that is most affected by this bed not being
perfectly flattened down is the six-row seeder
which is a pretty good investment for a small-scale farm but if you use it
properly it can make seeding greens, like we grow a lot of, really easy so it has
just very small divots and little brushes and the brushes you can raise
and lower that impacts how many seeds get into each of those holes.
So you can move this bar back and forth to change the seed size and the pulleys can be
adjusted to change the spacing. That'll make it turn faster or slower.
And you want to put equal amounts of seeds in each of those slots?
Yeah there's really - you have to very much fine tune for each variety of seed.
So what we do is we measure the amount of seed that we put into each one.
We weigh the whole thing. We seed the bed and then we weigh it again so we can see how much
seed we put in. That way, if for some reason it's not putting enough in after
a couple years anyway we'll know that that we're not getting enough in and then we
won't have to wait until the seeds germinate to see that.
But it's a super simple design as well you're just pushing this over and there's
divots underneath it that are created by these pieces here and then this roller
in the back covers the... that up. So some of the more simple seeders you have to then
cover your seeds up. This one does it for you, so it's a really one-pass deal
and you just roll it along. It takes longer to put the seeds in and get the
seeds out than it does to seed your bed.
That works pretty well for some
varieties but it is really a dense seeding implement and if you are
looking for something that requires a little more spacing this Jang seeder is
definitely more of a workhorse. So this one sort of replaced the Earthway which
a lot of people are familiar with and it uses gravity to put your seeds in
instead of requiring them to come up and over in a ferris wheel action.
This one the seeds drop down, go straight through and come out. And there's all kinds of
different plates you can put in for different seed varieties. This one's set up
for carrots right now and there are different spacings that go with gears in
here and on this wheel here so you can do different all different things -
everything from corn or peas you know, something that requires a lot of space
to carrots. And it has the same as the six row seeder it actually creates a
furrow and then it covers it up with the back wheel. So they sell a three- and
even a six-section one but those get really expensive.
Yeah. So and as far as pricing goes the Earthway seeder's a little bit cheaper?
Right and this one costs several hundred dollars more. The Earthway is
definitely sort of your entry level, but when you start getting into larger scale
commercial production, a single poorly seeded crop can really set you back.
So having tools that do what you need them to do consistently, that you can
depend on, is priceless. It's worth it. It's a small investment for a lot of frustration.
Yeah, so okay great!
So then we have the quick-cut greens harvester over here and maybe we can show that to you.
So this is a quick-cut greens harvester?
So this is a tool we got last year. It's from Farmers Friend and it's revolutionized our greens harvesting.
We used to have a crew of a couple people work on a 15-foot bed like
this and it would take them somewhere around 20 minutes to cut that with this
with knives. With this machine here it takes about two minutes.
So it really changes the game and makes greens harvesting something that's economically possible.
A lot more efficient, yeah. So it works by there's basically this green
rope structure here that will shove the greens into the basket and there's an
oscillating knife edge there that will actually cut the greens and it all works
on a Dewalt drill and so pretty simple stuff but but a total game changer as far
as how quickly and efficiently you can move.
So let's see how this works. All right.
Wow. So it cuts the greens pretty quick,
right off there and and then you can take them to a tote, shove them in like
that and go to the bagging station and wash them up.
That's great. Well, thanks for showing us all these cool tools that you use on your small sustainable farm, Carey.
Oh, I'm glad to share it.