What are your top tools or farm implements that make life as a smallholder that much easier? What’s on your Christmas wish list or gets regular use around your plot? We asked our team to share their essential implements and have created the Farm Tech Supplies Top 5 List of Farm Implements!

If you have a trusted piece of farm equipment you couldn’t do without, share a photo on our Facebook page and tell us why!

Farm Tech Supplies Top 5 List of Farm Implements

These are the tools we think every smallholder should have:

1#: Compact Tractor – chosen by Tom

compact-tractor

“Essential for any land owner”

For maintaining pasture, a standard garden lawnmower simply cannot cope with the different demands of a typical smallholding. Paddocks, rough uneven terrain, brambles and verges all require a mower with a bit more power and flexibility. An all terrain sit on mower can cope with some jobs, but a compact tractor can be used with flail or topper mower as well as a whole host of other implements.

Explore mowers here.

2#: Drag Harrows – chosen by Helen

drag-harrows

“Simple and easy to use piece of kit”

If you have land for grazing a drag harrow is a very useful piece of kit for removing the thatch from grass. Leaving this job for more than a year will result in an unproductive paddock with the grass becoming choked with thatch, making for poor quality grazing. Drag harrows can also be used to aerate grassland to promote new growth, help spread fertiliser or droppings, to prepare seed beds, level soil (removing ridges, ant hills, etc.) and to remove weeds and moss.

Explore drag harrows here.

3#: Trailers – chosen by Max

trailer

“Saves on heavy work all year round”

A small tipping trailer makes a big difference to the smallholder’s life; reducing the amount of wheel barrowing, and hauling in and out of vehicles you need to do. Look for trailers with wide tyres, that help to displace the weight more evenly and reduce tread marks. From taking feed out to the paddocks, moving logs, bails of straw and hay, transporting manure, it really does have year round usages.

Explore tipping trailers here.

4#: Ripper & Pipe Layer – chosen by Jasmine

ripper-pipe-layer

“Hassle free water pipe laying”

Laying water pipes can be a chore, it’s mucky, tiring and time consuming to dig a trench by hand, whilst it can be costly to hire a digger. The alternative solution is to use a tractor mounted Ripper / Cable Layer which cuts a channel and at the same time lays and buries the pipe as you steadily feed it in. To finish, you just run your tractor wheel over the channel to bed down the turf over the pipe. This versatile piece of kit can also be used as a sub-soiler if you remove the cable laying attachment.

Explore pipe layers here.

#5: Stone Burier – chosen by Martyn

stone-burier

“Create the perfect seedbed”

Finally, our last essential piece of kit is a stone burier. If you’ve got an allotment to prepare or an area of land to level out and lay grass seed, a good stone burier will do the job. The blades break up clumps of soil like a traditional cultivator and make light work of grass or old vegetable stems. These are buried with any large stones under a layer of lighter topsoil, ready to start planting out new crops.

Explore stone buriers here.

Don’t forget to let us know what your essential tools, farm implements or other kit are; post a photo to our Facebook page here.