The Two-Wheel Tractor Handbook: Small-Scale Equipment and Innovative Techniques for Boosting Productivity

by Zach Loeks

Overview

Small but mighty — a comprehensive guide to the use of two-wheel tractors for highly productive gardens, landscapes, and farms

TWO-WHEEL TRACTORS are multifunctional, economical, practical, maneuverable, portable, and low impact. Yet choosing the equipment is only half of it; the other half is integrating the right machine and implements into your land-based enterprise and coupling it with innovative high-efficiency techniques. Coverage includes:

• Why you need a two-wheel tractor
• Two-wheel tractor essentials including tractor implement options and functions
• Equipment decision-making to suit your scale, context, enterprises, and budget
• Safety equipment, operation, and basic maintenance
• Innovative use strategies including micro-plowing, making "Permabeds," in situ mulching, the "Compost-a-path Method," crop guilds, scaling up, and diversified crop management
• How to start from scratch, clearing new land, scaling up your enterprises, and more
• Case studies and rich examples from suburban landscaping to commercial market gardens from Europe and North America
• "Pro tips," "design boxes," and other sidebars for rapidly elevating your skills.

The Two-Wheel Tractor Handbook shows small-scale growers how to leverage walk-behind tractors to maximize the productivity and profitability of their enterprises. This full-color, highly illustrated guide is a must-have tool for urban farmers, suburban gardeners, rural homesteaders, orchardists, landscapers, and market gardeners looking to boost production.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771423731
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	114 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Zach Loeks is an educator, grower, second-generation permaculture designer innovating and specializing in Edible Ecosystem Design. His passion is demonstrating how small actions – strategically linked – can create big change. He is director of the Ecosystem Solution Institute, where he consults widely with homes, farms, colleges, schools, and municipalities across North America and around the world. His purpose is to help people create more edible and diverse farms, gardens, and landscapes while enhancing food security, community well-being, and societal resilience. Zach manages an award-winning farm featuring diversified food forest products, heirloom garlic, and a hardy tree nursery. His innovations have earned him three provincial awards. He is the author of The Edible Ecosystem Solution and The Permaculture Market Garden. Zach splits his time between his rural farm in Ontario and a sister urban farm in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Zach Loeks is an educator, grower, permaculture designer, and edible ecosystem innovator. Director of the Ecosystem Solution Institute, he helps homes, farms, schools, and municipalities create more edible and diverse landscapes. He is the author of The Edible Ecosystem Solution and The Permaculture Market Garden. Zach lives on his farm in Ontario.

Table of Contents

Liability Statement

Cover&Inside Material
Praise
Preamble

Introduction
This Book's Format
About This Book
Small-Scale Profit Resilience

Chapter 1: A Story About a Horse
The Horse and His Boy
The Origin of Two-Wheel Tractors
Honoring the Two-Wheel Tractor
The Italian Two-Wheel Renaissance

Chapter 2: Two-Wheel Tractor Essentials
The Definitive Two-Wheel Tractor
Eleven Two-Wheel Tractor Benefits
The Types of Two-Wheel Tractors
Row Crop Tractor with High Clearance
Row Crop Tractor Features
Tractor Components: Form and Function
Powersafe Clutch and Transmission
Tractor Operation: Getting Started
Steps to Get Operating
Steps to Begin Implement Operation
A Bit of Tractor Safety

Chapter 3: Implements and Their Uses
Types of Implements
Selected Equipment Profiles

Chapter 4: Equipment Decision-Making
Scale-Suitable Equipment
Scale Phases
Equipment Guilds and Operation Cycles
Guild Enterprise Production
Guild Enterprise Brainstorming Template
Budgeting for Tractors and Equipment

Chapter 5: Selected Enterprise Examples
The Backyard Gardener (.25–5 APA)
Suburban Homesteader (1–3 APA)
Market Grower (1–3 APA)
Row Crop Farmer (3–6 APA)
Back-to-the-Lander (3–15 APA)
Groundskeeper and Landscaper (Various APA)
Grassland Farmer (8–13 APA)
Tree Nursery (3–6 APA)
Edible Ecosystem Management

Chapter 6: Permabed System for Two-Wheel Tractors
Permabed System 101
Permabed Architecture
Permaplot Design
Permaplot Layout
Compost-a-Path Principles
Permabed Soil Design
Using Equipment for Crop Rotation Management

Chapter 7: Growing from Scratch
1. Clearing New Land (or Reclaiming)
2. Garden Plot Layout
3. Micro-Plowing a Field
4. Permabed Layout and Bed Building Options
5. Building Beds with a Power Ridger
6. Refining Your Rough Permabeds
7. Seasonal Bed Preparation Operations
8. Succession Planting and Crop Guild Design
9. Other Seasonal Management

Chapter 8: Tractor Maintenance and Care
Tractor Maintenance Simplified
Essential Tools for Maintenance
Essential Maintenance Supplies
Maintenance Tips
Checking and Changing Honda Engine Oil
Two-Wheeling into the Future

Glossary of Common Terms and Jargon
Index
About the Author
About New Society Publishers

Editorial Reviews

"As much as I favor managing your garden with hand tools, if you scale up to marketing you may need some help. In addition to serving as an operator's manual for two-wheel tractors, this book helps you define your goals for your enterprise and decide just what equipment you may need. A good resource to have."
—Cindy Conner, author of Grow a Sustainable Diet and Homegrown Flax and Cotton

"Jam packed with great information. This book is going to save serious growers a lot of time tinkering around."
—Curtis Stone, author of The Urban Farmer

"Zach Loeks' The Two-Wheel Tractor Handbook is a detailed, beautiful, & much-needed must-have for every market gardener's library - and for anyone serious about using small machines to manage their farm."
–- Matt Powers, author of Regenerative Soil

"This book is essential to anyone who owns a BCS tractor or who is exploring the purchase of one. I use a BCS in the garden, forest and the snow and found a ton of insights in Zach's book. The review of various BCS implements, different uses for these machines and maintenance tips is invaluable to the novice and intermediate user alike. This book should be included as a how-to manual with every BCS tractor sold."
—- Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture, author of Essential Rainwater Harvesting

"Easily the most comprehensive guide to two-wheel tractors ever written. Get more out of your two-wheel tractor with all the tips and tricks while saving money by doing the maintenance yourself."
—- Diego Footer, founder of Paperpot Co.

"This very practical manual will help us really understand our two-wheel tractors and get the best out of them while giving them our best. Even those in favor of minimizing tilling understand that some circumstances call for tilling, so let's do it well. Mindful, good use of machinery is important!"
— Pam Dawling, teacher, speaker and author of Sustainable Market Farming and The Year-Round Hoophouse

"The scale of farming is crucial in designing farm systems and planning for labor, investments, profits, and machinery. This book discusses scale and choosing a family of machinery that work together and allow a farm to grow over time in a comprehensive and innovative way that I have not seen anywhere else."
— Sam Oschwald Tilton, Direct Market Vegetable Specialist, author of numerous articles and resources on sustainable agriculture, vegetable farming mechanization specialist

"When growing vegetables for market, one of the most important lessons is that bigger is not better. It's quite the contrary; even 1 acre of cultivated land can allow a grower to make a living in farming. Another lesson is to size the equipment properly, which is why two-wheel tractors have become so popular in recent years. In this fantastic book, you'll learn everything you need to know about this appropriate technology. This book is truly unique, full of tips, hints and tidbits even for someone like me who's been farming with such tractors for over 20 years."
— Jean-Martin Fortier, author The Market Gardener

From the Publisher