Why Hand Tools Come First

A smallholding is rarely beaten by one big job. It is worn down by a hundred small ones: a gate that will not close, a bramble creeping along the hedge line, a barrow-load of muck to shift before breakfast, a wet corner that needs a grip cutting through it. Powered machinery is very good at a handful of large tasks, but it is costly, thirsty, noisy and often refuses to start on a damp January morning. A well-chosen set of hand tools will dig, cut, lift, carry and clear through almost everything a few acres can throw at you, and they will still be working long after the cheap second-hand rotavator has gone for scrap.

What follows is not a collector's list. These are the tools that earn their keep week in, week out.

Digging: One Good Spade and One Good Fork

If you buy nothing else, buy these two properly. A pressed-steel spade from a discount shed will bend the first time you hit a buried brick.

• Digging spade — forged carbon steel head, roughly 28–30cm wide, ash shaft. Pick a length that lets you stand upright with the blade just touching the soil.
• Border spade — narrower and lighter, ideal for beds, planting and working between rows.
• Digging fork — flat, square tines that slide into clay and lift potatoes without spearing them.
• Border fork — the same tool scaled for smaller hands and tighter spaces.
• Manure fork — round, curved tines for muck, straw and compost.

Keep the edges filed and the heads clean. Never use a spade as a crowbar on stony ground, and never lever a fork sideways against a root; that is how tines snap. A bucket of dry sand with a little oil in it, plunged into after each use, will keep rust at bay through the wettest winter.

Cutting: Saws, Loppers and Secateurs

Most smallholding cutting is too big for secateurs and too small to justify a chainsaw. That is the gap a pruning saw fills.

• Pruning saw — a Japanese pull saw with a 300–330mm blade will slice through a 100mm branch in seconds and leaves a clean cut.
• Bow saw — cheap, tough and unbeatable for green wood, firewood and clearing fallen limbs.
• Bypass secateurs — for stems up to about 20mm. Anvil secateurs are for dead wood only; they crush living tissue.
• Loppers — long handles, up to about 40mm, for the awkward cuts inside hedges.
• Billhook or slasher — for brambles, nettles and rank grass. A sharp hook clears a hedge bottom faster and far more quietly than a strimmer.

Sharpness matters more than brand. A blunt saw tears and bruises; a sharp one cuts. Learn to touch up the teeth with a triangular file, or accept that you will replace blades every couple of years.

Moving Things: The Humble Wheelbarrow

You will use a barrow more than any powered tool on the place. Buy a steel-tray builder's barrow of 65–90 litres with a pneumatic tyre and wooden handles, and keep the tyre pumped up. A soft tyre turns every load into a wrestling match, and a solid tyre jars your wrists to pieces on rough ground. If your land slopes, a two-wheeled barrow is far more stable and worth the extra cost.

Alongside it, keep a stock of trugs, buckets and stackable crates. They are lighter than a barrow for feed, eggs, kindling and tools, and a trug carried in each hand balances better than one heavy bucket.

The Unglamorous Essentials

These are the tools you reach for without thinking, and the ones most often missing from a new smallholder's shed.

• Dutch hoe — run it just below the surface on a dry morning and weeds die where they stand.
• Draw hoe — for earthing up potatoes and pulling soil into ridges.
• Mattock — the answer to stubborn roots, old paths and compacted ground.
• Crowbar and sledgehammer — for fence posts, gate hinges and stones that will not move.
• Fencing pliers — wire tensioning, staple pulling and cutting in one tool.
• Hand trowel and hand fork — forged, not stamped, with a decent handle.
• Soil rake and a stiff brush — for levelling beds and cleaning up after a job.
• Sharpening file and whetstone — without these, every other tool on the list is only half useful.

Buy Well, Look After Them, and They Last Decades

Look for forged heads rather than pressed ones, ash or hickory shafts, and heads that are tanged and riveted properly into the handle. Farm sales, auction marts and car boot sales still turn up forty-year-old spades that will outlive anything new and cheap. Handles are replaceable; heads are not, so check the socket for cracks before you part with your money.

Then look after them. Scrub soil off metal, dry it, and wipe it with an oily rag. File cutting edges little and often rather than heroically once a year. Sand rough handles and feed them with boiled linseed oil so they do not split in the frost. Store everything under cover, hung off the floor, where damp cannot creep up from concrete.

Do that, and the sharp spade, the sturdy fork, the pruning saw and the well-kept barrow will handle the great majority of what your land asks of you, quietly and without a drop of petrol.