by Steven Moore

Boy, there’s nothing quite like putting on the ol’ workboots, cranking up your 8-horse Turbo-Sodbuster tiller and ripping through the garden, is there?

There may be better ways, especially when you consider that running a lawnmower or tiller for an hour creates emissions equal to driving your car 150 km. Unless you have a lawn larger than an acre, a reel-type push mower will do a better job – and is better for you. It’s ironic how many people climb down off their riding mowers to get in a car and drive to the health club to stay fit.

We may have memories of straining to push a rusty old reel mower uphill with the desperation of galley slaves, but modern advances in wheel designs and lightweight alloys have transformed lawn-mowing from drudgery to a pleasure. There is nothing quite like the sound of a well-maintained reel mower clipping along, and your grass will love being neatly scissored rather than torn to shreds by the typical rotary mower.

Similarly, there are many alternatives to the other crank-up, plug-in garden monsters (tillers, edgers, string trimmers, leaf blowers, electric pruning shears, et cetera) whose glossy brochures you will receive as soon as you subscribe to any gardening magazine. There may be a place for noisy machines if you have several acres of market garden, and you probably won’t want to whittle those four-inch tree branches into wood chips with your pocket knife.

However, it may be worthwhile to keep in mind Wendell Berry’s standards for technological innovation:

1) The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

2) It should be at least as small in scale.

3) It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better.

4) It should use less energy.

5) If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.

6) It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided (s)he has the necessary tools.

7) It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

8) It should come from a small, privately-owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.

9) It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

In other words, if your tool prevents you from hearing your children speaking to you, or creates murderous resentment in your neighbors, it is probably too loud.

Using these criteria, some of the latest technological innovations are fairly familiar – the shovel, hoe and garden fork, for instance. Is the tractor a technological improvement over the horse? Using Berry’s standards, probably not. It may do work that is demonstrably better on dry, level fields in straight rows, but it fails to meet the other criteria. Is the computer a technological advance over the pencil? Ever try to repair your own computer? Computers are more expensive, use more energy, are larger and are produced by multi-national conglomerates. They clearly do "better" work, but at what cost?

How often have you wanted to drill a hole far from a source of electricity? Television and magazines promote battery-powered drills as the only answer to this problem. Anyone who has experienced the simple efficiency of a hand drill knows that noisy electric drills run by coal- or nuclear-powered generating plants are not a very smart solution to the problem.

There’s an amazing selection of efficient non-power tools out there: wheel hoes, studded rollers, soil blockers, hand-pushed precision seeders, broadforks, high-wheel cultivators, Spikes O’ Death aerator sandals, and cover crops like alfalfa which will help break up your soil without extra tools. For more information on these, read The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman (Old Bridge Press, 1989). Good tools are available from Lee Valley Tools (1-800-267-8767) and Berry Hill Farm Equipment (1-519-631-0480). Organic Gardening magazine and Harrowsmith often feature useful tools if you can get by the ads for over-churning, carbon monoxide-spewing beasts that are so representative of the Petroleum Age.

Let’s resist the culture that tries to sell tillers with promises of personal power over weeds. Solar-powered (i.e., you-powered) tools are slower, gentler and usually all you need to do your work, and they don’t cost the earth, either.

There is a certain kind of satisfaction that comes from doing a good job while you can still hear the birds sing.