Tooling Up

Build Your Own Farm Tools: Equipment & Systems for the Small-Scale Farm & Market Garden by Josh Volk 

Most important farm- and homestead-based skills — how to milk a cow, how to fix broken tools, when to plant potatoes, etc. — were passed down from parent to child for thousands of years. This process largely ended two or three generations ago, however, as farm industrialization required fewer farmers and many people moved indoors and to the suburbs.

Modern information technology has enabled millions of agrarian-minded folks to relearn these important skills, though. Via the internet, particularly YouTube, people who were never taught how to prune tomato vines can figure it out themselves in less than thirty minutes. It is easier than ever before to gain knowledge.

The problem with internet-based information (besides, of course, changing our brains so we can’t concentrate for long periods of time, polarizing our politics to the point where we hate each other more than ever, and making most of our young men addicted to porn) is that while there’s a vast quantity of it, much of it is sub-par in quality, and it’s difficult to judge which information is of value.

For example, say you want to learn how to butcher a chicken. There are million YouTube videos on how to do it. Most will give you the gist and will put you on the right track. But each one is slightly different, and most say that their way is the best and that some other technique is wrong. Surely there isn’t one absolutely right way to butcher a chicken — the point is simply that the volume of information can lead to confusion.

In other words, despite the vast quantities of free information, it’s often worthwhile to pay a small amount of money for information from a reliable source. This is why people are turning to books and training courses from trusted institutions (such as our online courses here at Acres U.S.A.!).

One such trusted source is Josh Volk, who farms at Slow Hand Farm in Portland, Oregon. Volk is the author of Smart Tools for Small Farms, a new book for market gardeners looking to develop tools to help them grow better.

The brilliance of this book is that it isn’t just a set of DIY plans. It certainly includes these, but several of the chapters include information on how to build things. Volk describes the different tools one should own for working with wood and with metal. He includes an entire page on how to drive screws. There are recommendations for power tools, instructions for sharpening and smoothing, and helpful descriptions of the different types and grades of wood, steel and plastic pipe.

Additionally, there is an appendix chock full of design and build basics: how to calculate length, area and volume; basic trigonometry for tool design; how to do cost-benefit calculations to help the reader decide whether to build a tool at all; and practical discussions of the physical properties of wood, steel and plastic.

The actual plans Volk provides cover the gamut of the vegetable farm: a seeding bench and a germination chamber for the greenhouse; a hoop bender, a rolling bed marker, a drip-irrigation system and a hand cart for use in the field; and a dolly pallet, a barrel washer, a spray station and more for the wash/pack area. Some of the ideas may not be that revolutionary, but at least one or two are surely useful additions for any farm and will easily save enough time and labor to cover the cost of the book. 

There’s one more unique thing about Build Your Own Farm Tools: a section that teaches farmers to build “tools” like crop-planning and data-collection spreadsheets. Volk provides very clear instructions on how to create formulas and format cells — for those who didn’t come from corporate America and may not know how to use Excel. 

One quibble with this book is that it doesn’t contain any photos — all of the graphic descriptions are in the form of drawings, many of which were probably based on photos. The drawings are all high quality and don’t need to be replaced with photos; it’d just be nice to see some final shots of the tools in action.

It’s easy to imagine a sequel to this book — perhaps one that incorporated projects that utilize welding. Welding is a skill that almost every farmer who owns a tractor knows but that few market farmers are familiar with. Knowing how to cut, bend and join pieces of metal expands the possibilities for garden tools enormously. Welding isn’t necessarily difficult — like any skill, the best way to learn is to just do it. Another book by Volk with some designs that include welding would be welcome.

Build Your Own Farm Tools: Equipment & Systems for the Small-Scale Farm & Market Garden by Josh Volk, 2021. Storey Publishing. 978-1-63586-320-8