The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

What farm would be complete without an old rusty Ford pickup, or even better, a tractor? Well, we have a micro-farm, so the farther our rust extends is to the hand-me-down wheelbarrow that my dad gave me earlier this year. They don’t write country songs about wheelbarrows, but I would contend that there is untapped potential there.

This thing was in pretty sad shape when I first got it. The base struts had collapsed, so someone put some plywood down there as a support. Plus one of the handles had broken off, and my little brother Alex had repaired it by attaching a 2×4 to that side. So one handle was normal, and the other was grotesquely large. After a little while dealing with it, I had the bright idea to take a jigsaw and router to it, and I have to say, it was a whole new experience with handles that actually fit in your hand.

Well, at some point this winter, the wheelbarrow fell over and the other original handle broke off. I thought I was going to have to take the whole thing apart and replace all kinds of parts to get it back up and running, so I was doing the mental calculations to decide if it was worth it. It was sunny this weekend and I felt like doing an outside project, so I took a look at it and realized that it wasn’t too hard to do what Alex had done on the other side. I basically just needed to make another handle and screw it onto the remaining wood frame.

This baby’s only got another year or so left, but every year I keep it out of the landfill is one more year before it eventually decomposes into compost in said landfill. Which I think it a good thing, but I’m not sure.