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Permaculture & Food Forest tools

 
Posts: 153
Location: Davie, Fl
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This thread is for the description of tools you enjoy to use in the food forest or other areas of your life. It would be great to split the tools up in different areas like woodworking, market garden, food forest, natural building, and the likes. I suppose you could repeat the tools that overlap in different areas. After we create this resource, it would be great to go up on the wikipage, as there is a lack of information out there of the tools people like to use which could significantly help newcomers.

Food forest:
Scythe: Real young food forest, just starting out. Chop & drop herbaceous plants, or to use for haying.
Kama: Great for chop & drop of woody plants the size of ( or including) your thumb. Can also be used for herbaceous, but I prefer a larger blade.
Sickle: Herbaceous chopping
Digging bar: Transplanting fruit & nut trees. We only have 2-8 inches of soil of calcareous, sandy soil and below that is oolitic limestone.
Pick axe: Transplanting fruit & nut trees, weeding cane grasses.
Pruners: Great for harvesting tropical fruits and chop & drop.
Hoe (different types): Used for harvesting root crops, transplanting, weeding.
Loppers: Coppicing small poles, chopping medium to large branches.
Wheel barrow: Food harvests, bringing tools or supplies (such as plants) for a big job, and bringing cane grass to the animals.
Folding saw: Sawing large branches

This is just to get started. I am sleepy so off to bed..

Goodnight permies!


 
pollinator
Posts: 1528
Location: zone 7
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grafting knife and supplies - to propagate trees by the hundreds for practically nothing.
 
steward
Posts: 2719
Location: Maine (zone 5)
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I like a hay fork for moving grasses and hay. I use a lot of dried grasses for mulching around trees and gardens.

A heavier garden fork is good for turning compost piles.

I use a hatchet for making small fence posts and garden stakes. The back of the hatchet works pretty well for hammering them into the ground.

I often use rocks for hammers, sharpening stones, and in rare cases to make a cutting tool of some sort. It's often quicker than walking back to the shed and keeps my "inner caveman" happy.

Does anyone here make their own tools? I've made a few tools in the past just to avoid spending the money or taking the time to go into town.
 
gardener
Posts: 361
Location: Central New York State zone 5a
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My sickle is necessary. Machete also helps for woodier plants like poke.
Wheelbarrow is also necessary.

I'm also partial to my trench shovel. Nice and steep, digs down deep for planting trees and digging ponds and swales, clay for cob.
 
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contributing a few:

Earthen plasters:
paddle mixer drill: mixing plaster in five gallon buckets, great for working alone.
Finishing trowel: rounded edges make nice smooth surfaces for finishing stuff like benches
staple gun: makes securing chicken wire easy if plastering onto wood or earth bags

Gardening:
bunyip water level (how to video!)

Carpentry
Japanese pull saw: accurate, conserves energy, faster than conventional saws
Timber framing chisel: notching poles for structures, mortise and tenon. very fun tool
(pic from a build i worked on in Pine Ridge SD.. I'm sitting on a post and beam load bearing wall made with mortise and tenon. We were putting up floor joists in the inked pic).
 
Posts: 23
Location: Portland, OR
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And don't get that universally beloved-by-permaculture-gardners-everywhere tool, the hori hori.
 
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