Good question – I hope to be able to come close to answering it after three or four more decades of gardening.

It all…depends. We strip turf and perform an initial loosening of the soil with a big excavator, then till our beds with a rototiller twice, once in the first year, and once in the second. The goal is to stop tilling after the second year, and just use a broadfork to incorporate soil amendments. I expect after a few years of broadforking we’ll move toward gently raking a bit of compost into the beds each year. We hope to eventually maintain some beds completely without soil disturbance. There are lots of problems associated with the long term use of rototillers and plows. We hope to avoid these problems.

Fallow land can be stripped/dug/brought into cultivation entirely by hand, but it is tremendously hard work. I have done it many times, but not never more than a thousand or so square feet in one go. As of today we have aproximately 12000 square feet of our field stripped of turf and brought into cultivation. a little under one third of that area is pathways, but the rest is crops. It would have taken years longer to do it all by hand, but it can be done.

I don’t think the minimum tool requirements would be different with or without pesticides or synthetic fertilizer. We are non-certified organic. I very firmly believe that crop yields in well-managed organic systems can meet or exceed those of chemical farms IF the soil is maintained very, very carefully.

I believe that if one HAD to feed themselves with just hand tools, they could, provided they were able to bring the land to an adequate level of fertility. This often requires off-farm inputs, which involves transportation, and manure,….

It’s complicated!

I realize you produce lots of food for other people, but I am curious what the minimum quantity would be. A plow and something to pull it?

Would the minimum be different if you couldn’t use pesticides or artificial fertilizer?

gary

kyle