Top 20 Homesteading Tools

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If you intend to do any really heavy work such as logging, trenching for soil-drainage pipe, digging in a septic tank or cutting a logging road through heavy woods, consider a full-size industrial tractor with a log grapple or excavating bucket on the front and a backhoe on the stem. New, they cost five or six figures. Good used ones cost about $15,000.

Unless you have substantially deep pockets, avoid any well-used but un-rebuilt machine that rides on articulated tracks. Its track link pins are sure to be worn through and destined to break at the most inopportune times.

DEERE'S GATOR: For moderately heavy hauling chores that do not demand a bulldozer or a two-ton hydraulically equipped tractor, see your local Yellow Pages to locate a franchised John Deere servicing dealer for a two- or four-wheel drive Gator Sized like a cut-down jeep and powered and equipped for homestead-scale chores, it seats the driver and one or two passengers comfortably up front, but rides on farm tractor style, forged-steel driveline components. It is lightweight enough to navigate marshes or hilly wooded tracks that could bog down a heavy tractor or fourwheel drive truck. It will pull a water trailer and, in its rear box, will carry several hay bales to livestock in a distant, dry pasture.

DR POWERWAGON: Next size down in size and capacity are the DR Powerwagons - a unique line of powered garden carts made by Country Home Products, Meigs Road, P.O. Box 25, Vergennes, VT 05491; (800 711-7276. All sizes are tank-tough and capable of hauling 800 pounds of bricks, firewood, garden compost or rocks. They are maneuvered by hand with stout handles and castoring wheels at the back, thus avoiding the steering mechanism that would boost their cost.

GARDEN WAY CARTS: And finally, if a powered hauler is more than you can justify, get yourself a shiny, metal frame and brown stained, plywood box-bodied Garden Way-style garden cart like you see in many rural and suburban gardens. These carts were designed by Garden Way founders Eddie Robinson and Lyman Wood back in the 1940s; they took their inspiration from the amazingly well-balanced, high-wheeled railway station baggage carts of the day. You may remember Garden Way carts from the magazine ads that compared their lightweight and easy dumping gardening convenience with a tippy, back-straining wheelbarrow. Perfectly balanced on easy-turning, rustproof, chrome-plated spoked wheels, a box cart will let you haul bulky or heavy loads of all kinds over an acre or so of flatland. A word of caution: Don't overload them. I once boldly filled a small model #16 (so-named for its 16-inch wheels) with 200 pounds of flatrock and pulled it down a foot high patio ledge. The load (twice the cart's rated capacity), collapsed the spokes in both wheels.

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