Humans were created with the innate desire to create and be industrious.  Whether it be at a place of employment, a building or improvement project, producing food, or a hobby, we are at our best and our happiest when we are engaged in these activities.  Obviously, in a perfect world we would be happiest at our job along with the other activities, but even in a less than desirable job there is satisfaction to be found.

Being able to be active is enormously beneficial to us emotionally and physically, but sometimes this is limited due to circumstances beyond our control.  Sometimes we are put in the position of having a disability.  I personally suffered a stroke in 2002 but was able to work in my career as a large animal veterinarian until 2011, Delayed symptoms of severe fatigue and spells increasingly occurred until I was forced to go into “medical retirement” (I.E. go on disability!)

It was difficult mentally to cut back on my physical activity after having lived a very physically active life. (Large Animal veterinary medicine being a pretty strenuous job) Not working did allow me to still have some physical activities at home, but I was limited due to fatigue and the other conditions.  I have had to cut back even more the last two years as my fatigue comes on quicker and lasts longer.  I still have plenty of strength, it just doesn’t go very far.

When I am able, I love to work outside on activities like gardening, taking care of animals (we have several horses and a few chickens) and yard work.  One of the ways I am able to extend my hours working is by using lots of labor-saving devices.  In this blog I’d like to break down the ones I am currently using and those I plan on using as time goes on.

For years my wife and I had a large garden (feeding four kids) with a variety of plants.  Getting the garden prepared for planting with mulching and tilling, planting, weeding, and harvesting all takes a great deal of effort.

Beginning with garden prep work started with a traditional gas tiller (rear tine model) This worked ok, but it eventually died, and we decided to try something else to save my energy.  For a couple years we used a spring-type cultivator attached to our ATV to break up the ground in the spring, followed by the use of a small electric-cord-powered cultivator. (Check out this blog for that activity) This wasn’t too bad, with the ATV doing most of the work.  If you do go that route, I would recommend using a hydraulic or electric hoist to raise and lower the cultivator.  The electric cultivator also wasn’t that difficult to use and was pretty lightweight.

Fortunately, we were able to reduce our garden size as the kids graduated high school and moved on.  (Sad but glad times).    We lost the use of the cultivator (our aged ATV decided to retire) and didn’t really want to invest in the repair of it, as we’d already done that several times in the past few years.  I assessed the situation and tried to figure out what would be the best energy saving ways to prep the garden.   Remember, I do have plenty of strength, I just have to ration it accordingly for each activity.

Going the “Little House on the prairie” way (horse drawn plow and the rest by hand) obviously wouldn’t work!  Investing in a new ATV wasn’t an option.  (My best-case scenario would be an ATV with a powered cultivator but dream on.)  The next thought was a standard rototiller again.  Starting a standard gas tiller can be easy in the beginning but gets harder as the tiller gets older.  Well, get an electric start tiller, you might say!  Unfortunately, I could not find a single tiller with an electric start.  Lawnmowers, snowblowers, generators, and even some pressure washers can all be found with an electric start.  No rototillers.  I’m not sure why!

I could’ve used the small electric cord powered tiller we have for the entire garden, but that would’ve been just too much work.  My next thought was to look for an electric powered tiller for the long haul as a stand in for a standard gas tiller.  There are a number of electric powered tillers out there, but most are the front-tine version, which require a great deal of wrestling.

Finally, I was able to locate a battery powered rear tine tiller.  There is only one currently on the market right now from Ryobi.  It was very similar pricewise ($900) to a standard gas tiller of the same size.  Needing something since our horses weren’t trained to the plow (lots of years doing 4h with the kids, you would think we would train them for plow work but for some reason the kids were against it), we decided to try that route and purchased one from a box store.

I did break up the garden ground this spring with the Ryobi, but the jury is still out.   It still took as much effort as a gas tiller, but in the long run I won’t have to worry about trying to start it and it will be worthwhile at that point.

As we looked at the gardening needs, planting was next.  My wife takes care of the planting as the little seeds are hard for me to deal with as are the transplants.  Being a little on the more seasoned side (we’re both mid-fifties) we added on some devices that would help Heather’s job.    There are various kinds of seeders out there (look here) but they seemed useful for larger gardens.  A rolling garden seat (see here) was very useful for various tasks from seeding and transplanting to weeding.  We also kept on hand some trowels (see here)  that were a little more ergonomic while planting and helped ease her carpal tunnel and arthritis.  It may seem like it is not that big a deal, but using this trowel really did help with wrist pain. A future goal might be to use a stand up transplanter (see here) to avoid bending as much.

We next went to the weeding.  (This chore might not seem that bad, especially if you keep up with it, but remember my work battery is pretty limited) We decided this year to invest in some landscape fabric (see here)  which could be reused for several years. We planted our peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers with the fabric.  So far, so good!

Maintaining plants such as cucumbers and tomatoes will hopefully be made easier with the use of trellis netting. (see here)  The actual goal here is to allow for easier maintenance and picking of the crops without having to bend over as much or work around plants.

Going forward, I will update this blog as the summer goes on to discuss how effective our ideas were, especially in the area of fatigue prevention!