by Diane Pleschner | Sep 22, 2025 | Farming
Any land worth having was someone else’s land before you. Of course a house needs less land than a farm, and you can divide land, plant houses and write off the handprint of the farmers who tended the fields. Money isn’t everything, but as the houses got closer to the family farm, the taxes for what the farm was worth had more to do with the price of housing than the value of the crops it might produce.
Taxes went up until Grandpa had to move on and we sold. We all moved north and kept at it with cattle and alfalfa instead of oranges and lima beans. The old place had tack rooms with old harnesses hanging. There was a forge and a place to work metal, the draft stock needed shoes. A can of carbide was in the corner and we could cook up acetylene, although I was too young to start cutting metal with more than a saw. But we sharped nails with the grinding wheel and made spears.
Moving north meant the old horse drawn equipment, the steam equipment and that which was too big to truck went to scrap or over the edge into the barranca. The new equipment yard in Oregon was modern for the times, but bigger just kept getting bigger, and by the time Oregon came apart the auction was a bloodbath . We put too much faith in those machines and they really broke hearts, and still it goes on — one farm sale to the next.
Maybe it’s not right that I should hold the machines responsible, but I do, and as the hedgerows came down, the fences, the property lines to the neighbors expansion and behemoths rolled across the good land, they killed off both the farmers and the towns nearby. They killed off the insects, the birds and after enough years, even the springs that once flowed.
Anyway I always wondered how it would be if we hadn’t mechanized, if we stepped back in horsepower towards minimalism rather than the grandiose. A hoe, maybe a couple of battery electric tools that could be replaced with something smaller and cheaper, in a pinch. But here it is, the end of expansion. Here we are and bigger is about to lose.
My time is arriving, although the auction was the end a long time ago. The old farm went down and I picked up a grub hoe. Grandpa had good advice I have tried to live by. He drove horses, fixed stationary combines, got big and got crushed. He said, “Buy water, not land. “ He said I shouldn’t expect to make any money farming. I took his advice, bought riparian water rights, a little land with it, and I have never been surprised that I didn’t make money farming. The houses are getting closer, everything else seems like it’s further away.
by Winfield Farm | Mar 31, 2025 | Farming
by Bruce Steele, originally published on Substack
I combined an 8” hoss tools oscillating hoe with an electric mini bike. It is both fun to use and utilitarian. It is a one off and I am always happy when a google search doesn’t reveal anything similar.
This electric cultivator together with an electric tractor are the only power equipment I use to farm/ garden. My farm has had a 5.8 kW solar array for ten years and two powerwalls for a little over five years. My irrigation, refrigeration and home electric needs have been 88% solar powered for about decade . The solar and batteries have paid back the purchase price of my system . I still have grid supplied power but my electric bill averages about $30 a month .
I have been raising market pigs for the last decade and the solar system has supplied all the energy to keep my eight chest freezers operating. I will admit any transport of product or feed has been done with internal combustion . I am tired of feeding fossil fuels into trucking in a business that is not much better than break even. My farm has produced about a million dollars of pork but my days as a swineherd are dwindling.
I had a garden , a farm stand and a few years as a market gardener before the pigs came along. The pigs were initially intended to feed on all the vegetables that kept going into compost from the farm stand but they kinda took over. After a decade however I would like to restart my former vegetable stand with a goal to measure productivity of an electric farm.
How many calories can one farmer and electric tools produce? Just like my solar/ battery system paid back its purchase price with reduced electric bills how long does it take to produce enough vegetables to repay the cost of the new tools? If there is some way to calculate the embedded energy costs of producing the whole system of solar electrics and farm tools then how many food calories need to be produced to repay the embedded fossil fuel costs? These are valid questions and they have quantifiable answers.
I will be recording weights of vegetables and grains produced but farming entails cover cropping and soil building with legumes and added compost. These projects require energy and are necessary for healthy soils and productive crops. The energy expended for soil building can only be recouped with vegetables and grains produced but some accounting for the work required to maintain soil health is still necessary . Furthermore soil building and adding organics are one of the few ways we have at our access to pull atmospheric carbon back into the soil.
I do hope my project draws the attention of some agriculture college or other farmers interested in ag electrics. The tools are off the shelf available and I have a few acres to farm.
So zero fossil fuels for farm equipment, fertilizer, farm electric needs or irrigation and to the best of my abilities to avoid fossil fuel transport of production.
Winfieldfarm
Buellton Ca.
