Using a Broadfork is Stupid! Or is it?

South comments:

Instead of buying that expenditures hand tool you go to Home Depot and rent a motorized tiller and do the job in a few hours and then go do your regular job haha this has to be a joke… I mean if you live somewhere where it would be ok to run a tiller in your yard say out in the country every second neighbor will own tiller or a tractor with a large tilling blade and for prob the price of fuel that you’ll have to make them take they would till your garden for you. This type of hand tool is not something that anyone living in 2023 in America should be using unless you just want to make a YouTube video are take pictures with it. Hell you might as well buy a wash board and wash your clothes by hand in a wooden tub. Haha

I replied:

A few things to consider:

1. This broadfork loosens soil to over 12″, whereas a motorized tiller only turns over the top 4-5″.

2. A standard tiller shreds the soil and inverts it, but a broadfork does not shred it, and does not have to invert it.

3. Do you really think our standard of living is going to continue as it is right now? There’s nothing wrong with buying and using a tiller, but where do the parts come from? What about the gas? Everything is more fragile than we think, and hand tools are very important to understand, keep and use as backups. And that’s no joke.

Now, full disclosure, I do own a tiller, and I do use it to make new beds.

But I have made many, many beds with a broadfork as well. And it makes a much higher quality bed, especially when combined with the addition of compost. If you throw your compost on a new bed location before broadforking, the tines open pockets into which the humus will fall as you fork, giving you a deeper addition of nutrients for plant roots to discover.

The reason we do things like this:

Is because we don’t trust in people like this:

And we don’t trust in an endless supply of this:

Or in the uninterrupted supply of goods coming from a place like this:

So we learn to use tools that work no matter what, and we stay fit.

In the West Indies we built and maintained a 1/4 acre garden with hand tools during the early days of the pandemic. Most of the work was done with grub hoes and a Meadow Creature broadfork.

Do you remember the pandemic, “South?” Do you remember all the issues with supply lines and lockdowns, etc. We do. And that was nothing, as pandemics go.

How high is your trust level in the stability of 2023 America?

Not only does the broadfork work well to make garden beds, it’s near indestructible. Use your tiller when you can, sure, but remember that a broadfork will not fail even when all else does. This is one of the main reasons we use and maintain hand tools.

And a washboard isn’t a bad idea either.

*Chinese factory image via AP/Chinatopix. 

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