. CHAPTER 3 .

GARDENING, FARM, AND RANCH TOOLS

I foresaw that, in time, it would please God to supply me with bread. And yet here I was perplexed again, for I neither knew how to grind or make meal of my corn, or indeed how to clean it and part it; nor, if made into meal, how to make bread of it; and if how to make it, yet I knew not how to bake it. These things being added to my desire of having a good quantity for store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of this crop but to preserve it all for seed against the next season; and in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of working to accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread. It might be truly said, that now I worked for my bread. I believe few people have thought much upon the strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article of bread.

—Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Most machinery used on a farm utilizes impact, cutting blades, mechanical advantage (leverage), or combinations thereof. If you expect to be able to feed your family in lean times, you can’t just depend on stored foods. You need to be able to grow a large-scale vegetable garden. That will take gardening tools, stored non-hybrid seeds, good soil, plenty of water, adequate fencing, and lots of practice. It takes years to fine-tune a garden. Part of this is adjusting to the varieties that grow well in your particular climate zones. It also takes years to build up rich soil and to develop multiyear plants such as berry vines and asparagus beds, and especially to grow fruit and nut trees to maturity. Start developing your garden now. Don’t expect to be able to magically start growing an abundant garden after things get Schumeresque.

HAND TOOLS FOR GARDENING

Reader “Calvinist Cadet” recommends the following for acquiring gardening hand tools:

Primitive tasks require primitive tools. When endeavoring to prepare for an extended grid-down or without rule-of-law scenario one would do well to have on hand a ready mix of equipment and supplies which can meet the challenges requisite to providing for basic needs. Would-be survivalists often point to hypothetical situations in which they would gather water from some nearby source and make fire within their hastily crafted shelter beside their tilled, loamy garden bed, while butchering game, harvested casually in some illusionary, postapocalyptic Shangri-la. Without primitive or pioneer-type tools, basic human functions can become impossible. A simple and comfortable water pail may someday be a family’s lifeline. An ax could be the only tool available with which to harness heat energy or to make shelter. An old and worn kitchen knife could be the only butchering tool.

Axes. Don’t forget spare handles!

A preparedness mind-set requires that we take advantage of the readily available resources of today and the pioneering knowledge and techniques of yesterday to ready ourselves for a return to the austere conditions our luxurious technologies have overcome. Today, we can walk the lawn-and-garden aisle of a local hardware store and for a couple hundred fleeting U.S. dollars acquire enough tools to provide for many of our needs. Someday soon we may wish we had laid up some of these basic tools. You have an ax, but do you have a maul and wedge? Do you have a froe and mallet (used for making shakes and squaring timbers)? Do you have a rotary grindstone on which to grind your ax, froe, and maul? You have a saw, but what kind? Is it a large cross-cut saw for felling trees? Can it cut through metal or remove the head of an elk? A man needs several types of saws for performing these relevant survival tasks.

Today we have Honda-powered garden cultivators to make short work of the backyard garden patch. Now imagine clearing and amending a vegetable patch larger than your entire house lot, in order to feed your family staple foods. And if you manage to clear this area of turf and weeds and rocks enough to support seed plants, you must now weed and aerate and irrigate and fertilize and harvest this vast stretch of ground with just the tools you have in your garage. So you have a spade—do you have a mcleod (a cross between a rake and a hoe, used for ground clearing, trail building, and cutting fire lines), a Pulaski, a mattock, a turf spade, a stirrup hoe, a sling blade, a pitchfork, a grain scoop? These are just a few of the necessary hand tools, which were common on every homestead, even seventy years ago. Go back a few hundred years and the very same tools were also the only weapons on the farm. Take inventory now, acquire what you will need, start using these tools and techniques. Harden your hands and your backs. Ready yourself mentally, physically, and materially for what may lie ahead.

Do you have a sturdy watering can? You’ll need one that will not clog or crack if left in the cold. How about a series of rain barrels from which to draw and water your crops? Now, we just move the hose and sprinkler around, twist the faucet, and believe our electric well pump—or, worse, municipal water—will flow and flow and flow. How many barrels do you have in your garage? Are you equipped to catch the rain or snowmelt from your roof? Could you build an elevated (tower) catchment system that could irrigate a broad expanse, without electricity and with the tools and lumber you have on hand? Planning on moving timbers for firewood or building structures? Make sure you have a peavey for log handling and a block and tackle to gain mechanical advantage.

With regard to harvesting timber, we currently lean heavily on our two-stroke chain saws. I know I do—we run a side business selling firewood from our retreat, ensuring that we always have at least ten cords on hand and continue to perfect local, low-tech harvesting and processing methods. Properly viewed, a good chain saw is a pioneer-type tool. The simple two-stroke motor has no circuit boards that would fail in an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) emergency. I would assert that if you have limited fuel-storage capabilities, you store premium, non-ethanol gasoline, mixed with a high-grade two-stroke oil. We have been able to start and run old Stihl two-stroke equipment that sat for years with a 50:1 mixture of Stihl oil and premium non-ethanol, 93-octane gasoline. This oil has a stabilizing ingredient in it, and non-ethanol gasoline is much better for long-term storage than the Al Gore alternative of ethanol “corn gas,” which can gum up or go stale in less than six months. If this approach were embraced, a whole other essay could be composed on which two-stroke tools to acquire.

Imagine being able to barter your ability to fall and buck your neighbor’s timber or run a two-stroke cultivator through his grass to save hours of shovel work turning a lawn into a garden. The two-stroke concept aside and returning to the basic premise of primitive, nonelectric hand tools for pioneering chores, the notion of bartering your services with these tools and techniques is strong. In the past, neighbors and churches got together to clear a field or build a barn. The Amish still cooperate around shared pieces of equipment and tools.

I consider small bottles of two-cycle fuel (premixed gas and oil) ideal to keep on hand for barter. This has several advantages: It’s compact, lightweight, premeasured, readily recognizable, and likely to be scarce, and it has long storage life and wide appeal.

Imagine the mission field of folks who can’t do for themselves, but you show up with a unique tool or ability and exhibit beautiful Christian charity by lending a hand or lending the requisite tool. If the idea of starting now to accumulate all of the tools you may need is daunting, incorporate conversations with your group or family or church friends. Find out how your equipment complements that of others you will depend on in emergencies or after a collapse. Financial resources put into these pieces of equipment will benefit you tremendously even during peaceful and prosperous times. They provide the ability to improve your home, retreat, or garden. There are spiritual and physical benefits of working with your hands and getting a bit dirty. You’re learning processes that can provide for your own needs and passing them on to children and friends, preserving the knowledge of the old way of doing things. Every task that was previously performed with the assistance of electricity or electronic modules can and should be rethought

Those individuals with stock animals capable of load work and the accompanying tack and gear will be so much better off. A mule, donkey, draft horse, or ox will be prized much more highly than the show horses and warm bloods that are the status symbols of today’s equine societies. If you are a suburban or home-based prepper, be sure you have one or more sturdy wheelbarrows, carts, or sleds. Put away a bicycle pump for airing up the tires when you can’t just run over to the filling station to inflate a flat garden cart tire in the spring.

Anything you do not have for survival after TEOTWAWKI (the End of the World as We Know It) will have to be made, grown, harvested, scavenged, bought, or bartered. Hammers, pliers, pullers, bits and augers—it is almost unfathomable what we take for granted or do not use anymore due to the readily available, Chinese-made, disposable items we use to sustain our everyday comforts and needs. We can go online to Harbor Freight for the disposable equivalent of power tools. Dig a little deeper—we currently have many resources for finding the older, U.S.-made tools that continue to ably do the job they were made for. Pawnshops, Craigslist, garage sales, and even scrapyards can hold tools and equipment that today’s consumers don’t know the value of. For example:

How many pounds of nails, screws, spikes, and pegs have you put up? Centuries ago, whole structures would sometimes be burned to the ground so that the nails that held them together could be gathered up and reused.

Remember all those old woodworking tools that your grandfather had and used, in an austere environment? And those primitive files, chisels, and planers will be invaluable. In the fields, all manner of rakes and shovels and picks will be used and broken, then mended or augmented to get the many tasks accomplished. Leatherworking and sewing, hide skinning and tanning, water gathering, shelter building and repair, gunsmithing and reloading, farming, silage harvesting, hauling, candle and soap making, all of these necessary tasks require specialty tools to complete, and in the absence of readily available grid power they become especially daunting. As we ready our retreats, homes, and farms for come-what-may, we must put on an attitude of confident can-do.

Consider realistically what it will take to provide the true necessities and keep the homestead going. When focusing on beans, bullets, Band-Aids, and broomsticks, do yourself, your family, and your community a favor and also prepare for the basic and historical tasks of a more primitive existence.

Five Essential Garden Tools

GARDENING BOOKS

Gardening for self-sufficiency on small acreage is best accomplished with extensive use of composting and with either numerous raised beds and square-foot gardening or through the French intensive (“double-dug”) method. Some gardening reference books that I recommend are:

The Complete Book of Composting, by J. I. Rodale and Staff

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times, by Steve Solomon

The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, by Carol Deppe

All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, by Suzanne Ashworth

Small-Scale Grain Raising, by Gene Logsdon

A NICE PIECE OF HICKORY

One often-overlooked aspect of gardening tools for hard times is the importance of laying in a supply of spare implement handles. Tool handles are typically made of hickory wood. These handles are difficult for most folks to improvise, especially if you live in a region where suitable hardwoods don’t grow. Buy plenty of spares—both for yourself and for barter and charity. If stored out of direct sunlight and at moderately low humidly, your spare handles will last for decades. And if you are blessed with living in a region with sturdy oak and hickory trees available, then study tool-handle making and fitting under an experienced mentor.

PLOTMASTERS

To bridge the gap between small-scale hand-powered gardening and full-scale tractor farming, I recommend buying a Plotmaster. This is a combination disk, rake, and grass seeder that is designed to be towed behind an ATV, a garden tractor, or a full-size tractor. It is ideal for planting grass or grain on small acreages (one to ten acres). So even if you can’t afford to buy a full-size tractor, or even if your acreage is small (which makes running a full-size tractor difficult), you can still raise some grain.

Plotmasters are expensive (around four thousand dollars) if purchased new, but used ones can be found for far less. Back in 2008, we found a used one on Craigslist for just eight hundred dollars, but we had to drive almost two hundred miles to get it. Be forewarned that Plotmasters are heavy. You don’t just lift one up into a pickup bed with two or three men. It is best to bring a trailer with a low ramp, so that you can roll it on. Even with that, bring plenty of help.

HI-LIFT JACKS

Hi-Lift jacks (also known as farm jacks or sheepherder’s jacks) are incredibly useful tools. I find new uses for mine almost every year. I recommend that you buy nothing but the actual Hi-Lift brand jack manufactured by the Bloomfield Manufacturing Company.

Using Hi-Lift jacks is potentially dangerous. Heavy objects falling off of these jacks and out-of-control jack handles have killed a few men and injured many more. Don’t allow anyone to use one unless they’ve been trained in their use. When lifting a load, keep your head or body from being directly above the handle. Make sure you move the handle through the entire range of travel and watch the walking pins to ensure they are engaging the beam holes and are walking up and down the way they should. After you’ve reached the desired height, always leave the handle in the fully up position. Then use a small bungee cord or a Velcro ski strap to secure it in this position. Lowering a load can be the most dangerous process of using a jack. Again, keep your head and body out of range of the throw of the handle. As the handle clicks into position at the bottom of the stroke, the entire load will literally be in your hands. Anticipate the load pushing the handle upward. (This is where most injuries occur.)

A pair of jack stands, a 3-ton floor jack, and a 48-inch Hi-Lift jack

Remember that all post-type jacks are unstable. You will need to brace or block the load before you consider getting under a vehicle while using a Hi-Lift jack. Be sure to experiment with these jacks at home, on a level driveway, etc. before ever attempting to use one in the field.

You can download an operation and safety brochure in PDF format from the Hi-Lift site. See snipurl.com/27oll9d.

Don’t risk your life using some cheap Chinese copy of a Hi-Lift jack, like those sold at discount tool shops—and good luck getting replacement parts for these! Bloomfield makes rebuild kits and replacement parts for all their products. Always keep a Hi-Lift jack rebuild kit in your vehicle. In addition to lifting your vehicle, these jacks can be used in combination with tow straps or tree straps and used as winches. They can also be used as oversize clamps, presses, and spreaders.

In addition to their vehicular use, we have found our aging but still quite serviceable pair of forty-eight-inch Hi-Lift jacks to be indispensable around the Rawles Ranch. Most frequently, we use them for pulling old fence posts. Bolting on a two-foot length of heavy chain just below the lifting surface (using a steel carabiner or a large grade 8 nut and bolt) adds tremendously to a jack’s versatility for tasks like fence post pulling and as a makeshift “come-along” (ratchet cable hoist).

Again, it is important to keep a factory (white box) rebuild kit handy. But the most important thing to bear in mind is to always have the jack’s pair of pins well lubricated and free of rust. Typically, owners abuse their jacks, often leaving them out in the rain. The pins rust, and consequently their motion gets stubborn. If a pin then gets stuck in the out position while you are lifting a load, it can be a very bad thing.

FENCES

Texas Rancher had the following advice regarding fences:

We use twisted smooth wire (no barbs) for horse pens but to contain cattle, barbed wire is necessary. Good gloves are essential. Pigskin gloves are very barb resistant. You will be nicked by the barbed wire, so stay current with tetanus shots. Every vehicle on my ranch has a set of fencing pliers and other fence repair items because I have discovered making many small repairs over time to be much easier than waiting for things to get so bad entire fence sections need rebuilding. Making many small repairs over time is also much easier than continually tracking down stray cattle.

Six-wire barbed wire fences are stronger and seem to function longer than those with fewer wires. They also catch more tumbleweeds and blowing debris that in high-wind conditions can act like a sail and bend T-posts. We go on tumbleweed patrol during sustained wind conditions. Many fencing problems are caused by not placing rigid poles (steel pipe, creosote-dipped wood, or cedar) at intervals in a T-post fence. We use six- to eight-inch oil field pipe either driven into the soil with a ram or set in concrete, both at low spots to keep a tight fence from pulling the T-posts up, and on ridges, which seem to be weak places for wind- and animal-caused shear forces.

We take extra time with T-post clips to ensure both ends are securely wrapped around the barbed wire. This causes the wire to be pulled up tightly against the T-post. It can be tedious but I believe it greatly improves the integrity of the fence. Western Union and other types of splices can work with barbed wire, but I have found pairs of high-tensile crimp-style tube splices per wire splice to be more trouble-free in the long run. A well-built fence (and it must be surveyor straight—vertical T-posts with tops all aligned) will always need less care than a shoddy fence.

At every point where a barbed wire fence changes direction, we use six- to eight-inch pipe braces set in concrete. Such a brace consists of an eight-foot-long vertical pipe at the point of direction change (three feet buried in the ground) flanked by similar pipes in line with the old and new fence directions. The three vertical posts are connected by five-foot runs of horizontal pipe welded a foot below the tops of the vertical pipes. A front-end loader is essential because these thick-walled pipes when welded together into a brace may weigh a thousand pounds. Wooden posts are easier to work with and steeples are easy to use, but nothing lasts like thick-walled oil field pipe. We wrap several turns of a short piece of barbed wire around the vertical pipes, leaving two wire ends, one about two feet long and the other four feet long. The shorter free end is wrapped tightly around the longer end. The fence stretcher and splices are then used to connect the free end of this wire to the long run on down the fence line. This is the only way I have found to ensure taut wire runs when using metal pipe braces. We strive to get it right the first time.

An assortment of fencing tools and a ratchet tensioner. Note the two different jaw widths on the tensioning tools.

A good-quality fence wire stretcher is also important. T-posts can be difficult to pull out of the ground if a fence line is being moved. We use a T-post puller. Everyone should have a Hi-Lift jack, which works well with a post puller, but if I’m moving a line of fence, I usually have a tractor with a front-end loader on site, so I chain the T-post puller to the front-end loader in order to pull up the posts. The loader bucket is also a good place to store the pulled T-posts. The higher on the T-post the puller is placed, the less chance of bending the post.

LIVESTOCK FENCING

Fencing is crucial for keeping wild critters out and your own critters in, to establish pastures, gardens, and large cultivated plots.

For versatility, my personal favorite fencing is forty-seven-inch-tall variable-mesh woven field fencing, tensioned on six-foot heavy-duty studded T-posts that are spaced ten to twelve feet apart. That is what we use at the Rawles Ranch. It will give you a fence that will hold sheep, some breeds of goats, most cattle, llamas, alpacas, donkeys, horses, mules, and more. I say “most” cattle because larger cattle, such as bison, will require stouter and taller fencing. And some ornery cattle will simply crash through and over a woven-wire fence unless you add an electric wire at the top. Needless to say, bulls of any breed require a very stout pen to contain them seasonally. (Unless you live in a very mild climate where having calves born in January wouldn’t be a problem, then you will need to pen your bull for four to eight months of each year to prevent breeding at the wrong time of the year.)

H-BRACES

In my experience, used creosote-soaked railroad ties work fine for H-braces, anchor braces, and corner braces. Owning a proper post-hole digger will save you a lot of time. Ames and several other American companies make quality post-hole diggers. Beware of the newfangled “short stroke” clamshell diggers, which have a mechanism that only requires the handles to be separated slightly to clamp the blades together. All of these that I’ve seen are made in China, and they are not built to withstand rough use. Unless or until there is a sturdier alternative, just stay with a traditional clamshell digger. And depending on your soil, an auger might work better for you.

To tension the diagonal wires for the H-braces, I prefer to use steel ratchet tensioners, rather than the traditional “twisting stick” windlass arrangement. Here at the Rawles Ranch, I use ratchet wire tensioners for building fence corners and H-braces, and for tensioning our solar-charged electric fences. I was recently bemoaning the fact that the only tensioners I could find at my local feed store and hardware store were made in China, and priced at nearly four dollars each. So I did some searching and found a mail order company called Zeitlow Distributing Company in McPherson, Kansas (zeitlow.com), that specializes in electric fence products. They sell the Strainrite Tru-Test tensioners, which are made in New Zealand. Note that the Strainrite ratchet tensioners (called “cliplock strainers,” in Kiwi parlance) are slightly wider that the typical American ones (such as the old Hayes brand), so you will need a tensioning tool (a.k.a. a ratchet handle) made by Strainrite, or one that is of compatible width.

Note: If you use railroad ties or other treated wood for your H-braces, be sure to wear gloves to avoid skin contact with the creosote, which is toxic.

DIGGING BARS

When building a fence in rocky soil, a seven-foot-long plain digging bar with hardened tips will be indispensable. A mushroom-head tamping bar is also quite useful.

If you get into an extremely rocky portion of ground along the intended fence line, you can construct aboveground “rock boxes”—a type that is commonly seen in eastern Oregon. These are cylinders of woven wire between thirty and thirty-six inches in diameter and four feet tall that you will fill with rocks anywhere from fist-size to bowling ball–size. Because the fence will have to be tensioned, make sure the side of the rock box that will contact the main fence wire has no rock tips projecting through the wire mesh that might hang up the main fence wire as it slides by during tensioning.

“HOT” WIRES

Horses in particular tend to be hard on woven-wire fences. Especially in small pastures, they’ll often lean their necks over them, reaching for grass on the other side. If you have horses, you can add a “hot” wire at the top of the fence that is energized with a DC charger. In anticipation of grid-down situations, a solar-powered fence charger (such as those made by Parmak, which we use here at the Rawles Ranch; see snipurl.com/27ntrev) is best.

GATES

I like steel-tube gates. If you strap on (or weld on) some woven wire or a hog panel, the gate will become “sheep tight.”

For the best security, you should mount the hinge pins with at least one pointing upward and one pointing downward. Otherwise, an intruder can simply lift a locked gate off of its hinge pins. For even greater security, you can also tack-weld the nuts onto both the bolt threads and the gate’s hinge sleeve assemblies to prevent them from being disassembled.

TENSIONING

Tensioning a woven-wire fence can best be accomplished with a forty-eight-inch “toothed” bar to hold the woven wire. These can be either bought factory-made or custom fabricated in your home welding shop. But for those without welding equipment, here is a simple expedient that can be made with wood, carriage bolts, and chain: Cut a pair of fifty-two-inch-long two-by-fours and install a row of protruding screws down the length of one of the wide sides. Drill a row of shallow holes in the other board, to accept the screw heads from the first board. (Like the teeth on a commercially made bar, these screws will evenly distribute the stress on the full height of the woven wire.) Drill through holes and position six-inch-long three-eighths-inch carriage bolts through both boards at both ends. Sandwich the woven wire between the two boards. Attach chains to the carriage bolts, and then connect the chains to a come-along. If no large tree is available as an anchor for the tensioning, then the towing hitch receiver on a parked large pickup truck will suffice. The attachment point of the truck’s hitch must be lined up within an inch or two of the centerline of your new fence, so that tensioned wire can be stapled to a wooden post and then clipped to the T-posts.