four miles per hour in a car—the speed of the common
bicycle! Recently, a study was made of the time the
average stay-at-home mom in the United States spends
working in, around, and for the home and family. It was
discovered that, even with labor-saving tools, she spends
the same amount of time that her counterpart spent one
hundred years ago! Why not look for ways to maximize
simplicity, sophistication, and quality, and yet get jobs
done more quickly? This has been our goal in
developing tools for mini-farming.
Early on in our research programs, we identi3ed the
need for four tools in particular that were available, but
not quite in the form we needed. They were: 1) the U-
bar, a large spading fork or kind of manual plow; 2) a
versatile multi-use mini-greenhouse for temperature and
pest control; 3) a watering tool that could water three
times as rapidly and three times more gently (to avoid
harming plants or compacting the soil) than any tool
presently available; and 4) a low-cost manual wheat
thresher. The U-bar and the mini-greenhouses are now a
reality, and plans and speci3cations for these two tools
are included in this chapter. In addition, there are plans
and specs for a soil and compost sifter, seedling ;at, and
row marker.
We invite you to build these tools as presented here,
and to make your own modi3cations. Any modi3cations
to the U-bar should be performed with special care,
however, as it is the result of a special, lengthy research,
development and testing process. Any modi3cations
brent
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