Dig into Spring with Appropriate Technology!
By Andrew Bennett
The Kootenay Local Agricultural Society (KLAS) proudly presents “A Free Field Day with the BCS 853 Walking Tractor,” the first in a series of spring workshops to showcase KLAS’s extensive tool library and to teach people how to use it.
As the snow melts, perhaps your green thumb is itching to sink into that fresh, spring dirt? Maybe you want to refresh some raised beds, or build some from scratch? Perhaps you’d like to build terraces into your slope? Do you have lawn you want to renovate and reseed? Or maybe you want to dig a water-harvesting swale or drainage ditch?
A BCS 853 walking tractor—replete with tougher-than-nails tillers, plows, and more that attach to the PTO (power take off) on its 13 horsepower engine and two beefy wheels—can fill all these needs.
Best of all, for all the tremendous power of the Italian-made two-wheel tractor, it uses very little gas. This is the tool of choice for market gardeners around the world, including Quebec’s Jean-Martin Fortier who sells $140,000 of vegetables each year, all grown on 1.5 acres using his BCS tractor and only $230 in gasoline.
Other well-known users include author Eliot Coleman—”The Four Season Harvest”—and Kelowna’s own radical bicycle farmer Curtis Stone who earns six-figures on eight small parcels of borrowed land smack-dab in the middle of town.
Very few local gardeners may recognize how easily they can access this, the tool of their dreams. Low cost rentals are available to KLAS members who attend one of our free workshops to learn how to safely, easily, and efficiently use the walking tractor.
Available implements include a stone-spitting tiller, earth-flipping 12″ rotary plough, bed-smoothing rotary harrow, cover-chewing flail mower, stick-eating chipper-shredder, and even a hardy brush mower.
KLAS members also have access to a hay mower, a hay rake, and a hay baler, and to metal hoop benders to make inexpensive steel structures from 4-feet to 12-feet wide, bee-keeping equipment including honey extractors, commercial dehydrators, and more.
The first workshop of the season will be taught by eco-farmer and KLAS secretary Andrew Bennett on one of his leased farms in Rossland on Sunday, April 13, from 3 to 6 p.m.
Participants will learn all the bells and whistles, and then will have a chance to sink the tiller, plow, and harrow into the soil and see for themselves what all the fuss is about!
