On Mechanization
On another wet day on the hillside, I am pondering the mechanization of my gardening efforts. I will start with a simple commentary on manual versus automated work. It is true that I can get a strong Mexican laborer’s back for the day for $160. That’s $20/hr plus lunch and transportation for eight hours of work. Let’s keep this simple and talk about moving mulch or stone (as in smaller rocks and pebbles) generally downhill from my driveway especially to the back hillside. While I am getting the last 10.5 yards of the mulch I believe I need to cover the back hillside, I do not delude myself into thinking that there won’t be annual replenishment needs. Even though I take many different things downhill, including especially plants, its easiest for analytical purposed to keep it simple with mulch because the task is straightforward and the need is more or less ongoing.
So, for $400 I can pretty much move and spread 10 yards of mulch in the course of a day. My alternative is to do it myself. It would be silly to compare that $400 to my expert witness billing rate because we all know that we garden to give ourselves physical activity and not to save money. But moving loads downhill with a wheelbarrow, even a two-wheeled Gorilla Cart that makes it easier on the back, takes a long time and is a bit on the aggressive side for my aging keister. So, I have been wondering about buying a garden tractor. I have scoured the websites of John Deere, Kuboto, Honda, Massey-Ferguson and Husquavarna, more or less covering the global brands of these things. My biggest problem besides the cost (they are at least $10k for a new model) is a combination of maintenance, storage and width. The width is the biggest issue since I have fairly narrow spots to navigate to get around the house and down the hill. In fact, I am not certain any of these units could make it around the tight house corners required to be navigated. There is also the issue that riding a tractor down a short hillside takes almost all the physical work out of the effort and may even add some danger of capsizing on the steep and narrow.
Every time I have started my search, something that invariably happens on a rainy day like today, I end by agreeing with myself that it would be a wasted purchase that would take up too much space and vex me with gassing and maintenance concerns. Then it struck me, we are in the midst of an electrification boom with Teslas at every stoplight and all my power tools (including blower and string trimmer) being electric battery-operated. What was available in the EV space? There certainly are EV sub-compact garden tractors, but lots of the old concerns are still there. But then I saw a new category that caught my eye…the electric power handcart category. Apparently I am not the first guy who wants help with wheelbarrowing stuff around my yard and up and down my hills. I actually found a website called handtrucks2go.com and found a vast array of mechanized vehicles that help people in tight spaces that don’t want internal combustion engined beasts to maintain.
There was specifically an entire line of wheelbarrow carts available. The variables have to do with size and capacity as you would imagine, but they also have to do with four-wheel versus two-wheel drive and manual versus pneumatic dumping capability. Let’s start from the back. Even if I had the largest unit, which holds 10 cubic feet (37% of a cubic yard) and it was filled with rocks, would I need a pneumatic dump capability or would it be just as easy to unhitch and tilt the dumper? No question that automating the dumping capability is an excessive feature I don’t need. The two versus four wheel drive does not seem to effect the units ability to work on a hillside and the single versus dual wheels (ag not turf) seems sufficient for my needs given that I have tamed the hill with pathways at this point.
When I called to inquire about the differences in the units, something they encourage one to do on their website, I got a rather brusque man who was more interested in booking the order than answering the questions, but I did extract what I needed from him nonetheless. This is an Ohio company that makes these and he did manage to tell me that they have been in big demand during the pandemic and guys like me are working more in their gardens and doing their best to save their backs at the same time. So, the units are ten weeks out for delivery, which is not a problem for me since it is a long-term tool for the property. I did have to pay a little extra for the super-duper battery (I have no idea if its worthwhile, but it seemed smart to opt for that) and bit extra for residential delivery since I have no loading dock. But other than that, I was good to go and I did indeed go ahead and purchase it. By the time it arrives, the back hillside will be completed more or less and it will be interesting to see if all my gardening expectations into the future will come to fruition as I suspect.
I am particularly anxious to show off my new tool to Winston since he is a like-minded gardener who buys lots of mulch and tries, as I do, to move some of it around by himself. He defaults to Mexican labor, but much less so than I do, so I suspect he will prove to be an active borrower of my new garden toy. As for the local day labor market, I do not think that having this power wheelbarrow is going to do much to my use of day laborers since getting stuff up and down the hill is something I do in between visits by the crew or by Joventino. I do suspect it will cause me to be a bigger customer of KRC rock, if that is even possible, given how much I already buy there. I’m betting that my new mechanized hauling device will cause me to buy more river rock and pebbles in bulk and load them up for transport down hill. I will wait to test this carts performance before I jump into that game, but if it works as advertised, I’m guessing there are some spots downhill, like around the small live oak in the ravine, where the base of that tree would benefit aesthetically from a ring of river rock at its base.
What I am already feeling is that this new mechanized hauler will open up whole new horizons for property projects for me since the hardest part is always getting the shit downhill and wearing myself out by thinking I can do all the toting and hauling myself and not wanting to waste a whole day laborer on the task. This EV wheelbarrow coats about as much as most of the pieces of exercise equipment I have bought over the years. Those got used a few times and then went into the basement only to be eventually tossed out or given away with very little mileage on their odometers. I suspect my little EV cart will get a lot more use and since I will need to load and manually unload it, not to mention walk both downhill and uphill with it, it will see a lot more use than a Nordictrack or exercise bike. Makes perfect sense to me and that once again proves the flexibility of the human mind to rationalize whatever whim needs justifying.