| I live on a 2 acre hobby farm. Here are some obvious pieces missing from the box: Tractor
Backhoe
Rototiller
Auger
Fencing First necessity: water. Where will you get it from? They include a pump. That's nice. How will you dig the hole to get down to the water in order to pump it? How will you dig the holes for your fence posts? Yes you can use a manual post-hole digger. That's what I did. I don't recommend it. Does the box include posts and wire? How will you compost? I have several animals that generate a lot of manure. The easiest way to turn it is with a rototiller--preferrably connected to the PTO on the tractor because the manure pile is very large. It would take a day to turn it with a walk-behind tiller. It would take one day a week to collect the new manure by hand without a box scraper on a tractor. Ever have to bury livestock? You need a deep hole. Anything too shallow attracts predators. I've buried a few by hand. I don't recommend it. So, a little 25 hp tractor with a 3-pt PTO and accessories including auger, tiller, box scraper, backhoe, and front-end bucket is almost mandatory unless you have a lot of free labor. And this is supposed to be sustainable off-grid, so that needs to be electric. See the Global Village Construction Set (http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/). |