Oct. 10, 2024

Mid-week this week I went to visit my land, I probably need to be going twice a week right now. I bought a pickaxe (actually mattock) and 10kg of broad beans to plant as a cover crop. I went to try out the process; I had no idea if my mattock planting idea would be feasible. I planted about 4 rows of beans, in 20cm spacing, rows of 15m long, in 1.5 hours. It works, it’s just not particularly fast or light work. I started right at the beginning of the field, right by a popular path for dog walkers. I probably looked quite medieval hammering into the ground with a pickaxe, on my own trying to plant beans. I felt a bit exposed. After 1.5h I got quite tired. I could probably push myself to do 2-2.5h in one session, but then be exhausted. I figured that my ideal goal of planting 80 rows of beans would take me about 30 hours of pickaxing.

So with that in mind… I thought hard about what other tools I could use to make the job easier. I bought two more tools, a twister thing and a rotary thing, and have been awaiting their arrival to try round two next week.  Note - I did consider a wheel plough, there aren’t really any to buy in the UK, mostly just US and China. I didn’t want to spend too much on new tools that might not work. My worry with the wheel plough is that it would not be strong enough to push away the rocks underneath the soil. I’m hoping the new twister tool will be lighter work than the mattock, even if not necessarily faster. I’ll be ordering the trees soon, which will be the most important task to complete before end of November.

I ended up hiding my tools in the bush by the field so I didn’t have to bring it back and forth each time… I hope they’re still there when I go back. I need to build a storage bench for there soon.

Checklist

- 4 rows of broad bean planting
- More tool ideas

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