Greetings from Toivola!
Our farm, Whispering Wild Market Farm, along with our cohort farms, received an NCR-SARE Farmer Rancher grant in 2024 entitled "Demonstration of low-impact tractor cultivation in a regenerative farm model to increase production using equipment sharing on multiple farms". We were able to purchase several pieces of tractor implements and equipment with the intention of reducing labor costs, fatigue, and overuse injury while increasing production, revenue, profit, soil quality, and quality of life for our farmers.
The equipment we purchased was a PTO Power Harrow, PTO driven Compost spreader, an undercutter, a subsoiler, 2 Rohand II's (for different bed widths), pallet forks, and a PTO fence trimmer.
We used these pieces for bed prep, drainage, loosening soil, creating a tilthy seed bed, spreading compost, loosening crops for ease in harvesting; planting, weeding, and harvesting on the Rohands, moving heavy tarps and materials with the pallet forks, and keeping fences clear. We would like to share our results with you.
We experienced a decrease in labor needs by 75% overall. For example, trimming fences would take us 30-40 hours with handheld electric/gas trimmers. The PTO trimmer knocked that job down to 4 hours. The compost spreader took 60-70 hours of heavy labor moving compost by buckets to just 6 hours with the tractor bucket and compost spreader. The Rohands were invaluable not only in decreasing the time it took to complete jobs like planting onion starts and weeding, but it took the pressure off the back, hips, and feet. The soil improved with subsoiling and undercutting that mimics broadforking. The power harrow was a favorite amongst the farms, creating a perfect seedbed with minimal effort.
We saw an overall doubling of our revenue and an increase in individual crop profit up to 10 times, including a 10-fold increase in production, revenue, and profit for potatoes. Many crops increased production by 4 times, as we were easily able to expand our farming acreage and were able to afford to hire a full-time farm hand.
Even with deer pressure and extreme rain events that took out entire crops, we were able to meet every actionable data insight with these pieces. We believe a perfect season would have yielded even better results.
We included a shared equipment program in our grant and shared these pieces with 2 neighboring farms, with the goal of sharing with all interested neighboring farms around the Keweenaw. These cohort farms also saw increased production, the ability to hire new employees, expanded their farms, and reduced injury and fatigue.
We wanted to specifically bring the demonstration of these pieces to your attention to encourage you to share these videos and results with the farms in our region via email, social media, and through presentation at your next meeting and/or convention. We would be happy to present these findings and look forward to working with you more.
Please see our YouTube videos below to view this demonstration. Thank you.
NCR-SARE awards 30k to UP farms for equipment sharing: tractor cultivation
We Tested a Rohand II Picking Assistant on Our Market Farm
Low-Impact Tractor Cultivation: Featuring the Power Harrow
Regenerative Farming Equipment Doubled Our Production
Thank you for your time and attention,
Gina Kerr
Whispering Wild Market Farm
Toivola, MI
This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number FNC24-1422 through the North Central Region SARE program under project number XNC21-XXX. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.