By George DeVault

POCANTICO HILLS, NY (Dec. 11, 2004) — Imagine, if you will, the following futuristic market gardening scenes inside a high tunnel:
•Harvesting 100 pounds of mesclun – all by yourself – in just one hour. You don’t burn any fuel, use any electricity or have any worries about accidentally slicing your fingers with a razor-sharp field knife or scissors. Perhaps best of all, there is no kneeling.
•Tilling alfalfa meal fertilizer or a fresh layer of compost into only the top two inches of soil – without muscling a bulky garden tiller around tight turns or choking on smelly exhaust fumes, because you’re not burning one drop of fossil fuel.
•Seeding not one, not four, but six closely spaced rows at a time in fluffy, freshly tilled soil with no need of “rolling” the soil before or after planting. Make one pass up a 30-inch bed, one pass back down the other side and you’re done.
No, you have not just entered the “Twilight Zone” or a high tunnel built by Stephen King. You have instead glimpsed the future of more profitable small farms, as envisioned and demonstrated by Eliot Coleman and his many friends from Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Michigan.
“Winter Greenhouse Production of Organic Vegetables in the Northeast” was the official title of the one-day how-to workshop at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture (www.stonebarnscenter.org). Unofficially, it might have been called New Weapons for Economic Self-Defense on Small Farms.
The new arsenal consists of:
•Greens Harvester – A single saw blade mounted on a metal framework with a nylon basket to catch the clipped greens.
•“Tilther” – A stainless steel tiller that is powered by a rechargeable electric drill. You supply the drill.
• 6-Row Seeder – With soil rollers mounted in front and behind for easier, one-pass planting.

“The thing that gives most small farmers a hard time is economics. How can we cut out paid labor so that more of the money stays here on the farm?” Coleman said after the conference.
Case in point is Coleman’s Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine. In 2003, his farm sold $100,000 worth of produce from just 1.5 acres, including one-third of an acre in greenhouses. The net for the year was a disappointing $25,000. The culprit was labor. Four people work on the farm: Coleman, Farm Manager Siri Beringer and, on harvest days, two hired workers who are paid $9 an hour.
“With these tools and keeping our same staff that (gross) could be $150,000, because we could be that much quicker and efficient, or we could be getting rid of some staff and keeping more money which means a better income. Add the salary of the two harvest helpers into what stays here on the farm and, all of a sudden, things have changed a lot,” Coleman said.
“The tools have been aborning in my mind for 10 to 15 years and I have kept trying to find someone who could help me turn ideas into reality. I can’t tell you the number of dead ends I encountered. Six months would go by and nothing would happen because they were busy on other things. Of course, I was asking for miracles.”
Coleman said he finally found who and what he was looking for in two Maine-based mechanical engineers, Jon Hill, accessories product manager at Johnny’s Selected Seeds, and Art Haines, an independent engineer and inventor under contract to Johnny’s. Hill used to engineer optical sensors for the auto industry. Haines automated a variety of manufacturing processes in many different industries through his own company, Applied Robotics. His latest invention in the 2005 Johnny’s commercial catalog is the Seed Stick Planter, a jab-type planter that moves mid-sized seed (sunflowers, beans, corn, squash, pumpkins and cucumbers) from the hopper to the desired planting depth with one motion.
“The greens harvester was the first thing,” said Hill. “We started off with a powered device, trying to drive it with an electric motor.” The engineers experimented with a rechargeable electric saber saw and cordless drill as power sources. “The problem was that it wasn’t just the blade entering the greens. The structure guiding the blade following from behind made the greens bunch up. We couldn’t get the greens to move past the guides.”
Hill said they could have installed mechanical fingers or rollers to keep the greens moving, but that would have added much weight and expense. “We were trying to keep it as simple as possible.” That’s when the pair questioned the basic concept of sawing versus cutting. Traditional sawing tears away a small section of each stem cut. Like sawdust, the stem fragments threatened to further gum up the works by fouling the blade and harvested greens with small bits of vegetable matter. The engineers found what they were looking for in a blade that simply slices, instead of saws. “We used a boneless meat-cutting blade. If you’re cutting meat without a bone, you don’t need to take a kerf the way you do with a wood saw. The meat is soft enough to move out of the way as the blade passes,” Hill said.
Original prototypes weighed about nine pounds and were only 18 inches wide. The latest manually powered model weighs only 5.5 pounds – and is 42 inches wide. (Price has yet to be determined.)
Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens in northern Vermont, said he recently used the greens harvester to cut 200 pounds of 3-inch tall mesclun in only one hour; most people could easily cut 100 pounds of larger greens per hour, he said. Johnson figures that tool alone could save him at least $10,000 a year in labor.
“Most of the profit is in how to save money,” said Johnson. He spoke at the workshop mainly about his low-cost greenhouses made of locally cut spruce and cedar logs, instead of metal pipe. Johnson’s newest greenhouse measures 42 by 420 feet. Standing 27 feet tall at the peak, it is designed to accommodate all of his field equipment. He plans to heat the greenhouse with waste cooking oil. Johnson sells salad mix and a wide variety of vegetables throughout Vermont and to various markets in Boston. He is starting to sell in New York City.
“There is money to be made in this business. If you can do it here, you can do it most places,” Johnson said of his location in Zone 3 about 30 miles from Canada.
Demonstrating the greens harvester at the workshop, Johnson surprised everyone with the fact that it required no kneeling. To use the harvester, Johnson stood with feet wide apart in a walkway and leaned over a bed of greens. “Knees wear out, backs get stronger,” he quipped. Holding the long blade just above the ground, Johnson steadily moved the harvester forward by gently swinging his arms.
The technique works because slicing doesn’t take nearly as much energy as sawing, explained Hill. Once the Johnny’s engineers finally questioned their early battery power sources, they said, ‘Who needs them?’ “Coming to that realization was a big step. We were throwing off old baggage, looking at it very freshly. The harvester works with densely planted greens. We rely on other greens to hold the green that’s being cut erect.”
Like the overgrown razor that it is, Hill said Coleman now uses the greens harvester to “shave” the stems of spent greens at ground level, instead of pulling old plants by hand. Coleman then removes the cut stems, adds fresh compost or other soil amendments, tills and plants immediately. “The tilther churns up roots and mixes in amendments, so he can plant right away. Getting a bed ready and planting it the same day saves a lot of time.
“The Tilther was the biggest challenge,” said Hill. “We were trying to make it strong enough to hold up in the environment where it’s used, but make it lightweight, portable and the right tool for just the top two inches of soil. You can hit some really hard things in the top two inches of soil, so it had to be made robust. The aluminum frame and stainless steel shroud of the first working model did the job right out of the gate.”
Unlike regular garden tillers, the Tilther has no transmission or other obstructions that leave an untilled strip in its wake. Six staggered, curved stainless steel tines shred weeds and roots the entire 15-inch width of the Tilther. With a tine speed of about 300 rpm, the Tilther mixes soil so thoroughly that there is no need to rake beds by hand before planting. The tilther tips the scales at just 22 pounds. It comes equipped with the same ash handles used on the Swiss-made Glaser Wheel Hoe. The handles pivot, so the operator can walk between beds. The drill’s trigger is depressed by pulling on a piece of rope attached to one of the handles. Introductory price through Johnny’s is $350. Lead time is four weeks.

Seeding made easier
The same type of thinking went into the new seeder unveiled at the workshop. For years, Coleman has been touting a German-made 4-row pinpoint seeder that is pulled along greenhouse beds. Planting depth is controlled by the angle of the handle.
Then came word that seeder was being discontinued. “The company is not making them anymore. It was a low profit item, since they make bigger seeders. We bought everything they had. We’re down to 30 or so,” said Hill.
“So that gave us the opportunity to think, ‘What do we really want in a seeder?’ It largely came out of Eliot’s mind. He was making three passes with a 4-row seeder. So we said let’s make it six rows and only make two passes,” added Hill. Other design improvements flowed naturally from years of user comments about the 4-row seeder, mainly the difficulty of emptying leftover seed, the extra work of rolling beds before and after planting, and strain on the operator’s neck and shoulders.
So the new seeder was designed to be pushed, instead of pulled. Seed hoppers are twice as big. A seed tray was built in to make emptying seed easier and neater. Expanded metal rollers were added, fore and aft. The front roller controls planting depth and flattens beds. The rear roller closes furrows and firms beds. The seeder’s ash handle pivots. The unit weighs 10 pounds. It will be available through Johnny’s in April. Price: $320.

Helping ourselves
The greens harvester, Tilther and improved seeder are just three of seven new tools that Coleman has been dreaming of for years. (Others now in the works include a flame-weeder, compost spreader and fertilizer spreader all sized just for intensive beds.) Once he found the right mechanical minds to turn them into reality, the next hurdle was money. Practicing what he preaches, Coleman dipped into his savings for a new barn, and anted up $4,000 to get the tools through design and into production. “I told Jon and Art, ‘Here is our seed money. Run with this and pay me back when something happens,’” Coleman said. “The more of these tools there are on the market the better for small farmers. I just want these things to be available so I can buy them.
“Small farmers are always some of the most ingenious people I have ever known. They are always coming up with new gadgets. They should do what I did and try to find someone who will make it available to other growers.
“There is no one out there who is really going to help us survive,” Coleman said. “We have to figure out how to help each other survive. Up to now we have been unfairly constrained by the fact that people won’t pay what food is worth. So, we have to make the grower more efficient, keep the farmer on the farm and looking more like a normal citizen with a normal income.”
For more information, contact Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 800-854-2580 or visit www.johnnyseeds.com.

George DeVault of Emmaus, PA, fixes tractors, builds high tunnels and writes some. In his spare time, he farms.