By DOUG GRAVES

Ohio Correspondent

DAYTON, Ohio — Ben and Emily Jackle of Mile Creek Farm in New Lebanon have no need for a 150-hp tractor. Nor do they have use for a 36-inch, eight-row planter. Oh, they’ve had them before – but they’ve been altered, dismantled and reconfigured to fit their 32-acre farm.

Thanks to their knowledge of welding and mechanical downsizing, the Jackles can transform any enormous eight-row into a manageable five-row cultivator. Chisel plows (some of them too big for their smaller acreage) have been machined and altered to fit this farm. Even large transplanters and disc bedders have been fabricated and downsized for use on the couple’s certified organic acres.

“We could be a much larger operation, but it would not afford as much time to be able to build and modify the equipment,” Ben Jackle said. “Otherwise, we’d have to secure loans to buy new equipment. We’re saving time and money around here.”

Roughly 12 acres of this couple’s land is a certified organic specialty crop farm that produces more than 500 different vegetables. “Well-maintained and appropriately scaled equipment is essential to any successful and efficient farm,” he said. “We could purchase any new piece of equipment that we need, but we’re believers in maintaining, modifying and fabricating the equipment we already have.”

From a distance it looks just like any other small farm, but a closer glance reveals the couple operate the land using two old tractors, a two-wheel walk-behind tractor, a cultivating tractor, a specially designed mechanical transplanter, a modified disc bedder, altered chisel plow, rototiller and sidedresser. Not only has all their equipment been refurbished but it was altered in some fashion to suit their specific planting and harvesting needs.

Last month the Jackles were among other breakout session presenters at the annual Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Assoc. (OEFFA) conference in Dayton. There, they provided attendees with tips and reviews of small farm machinery.

“Scale technology is what’s of interest to us now,” Jackle said. “We have two directions with our efforts. First we take those hand tools and mechanize them slightly, and secondly we take large farm equipment and make it work for our small-scale farm. So, we’re taking things from tiny farms and huge farms and making that equipment adaptable to our farm.”

He grew up in Chicago, but his roots in ag emerged through his mother growing up on a grain farm in Illinois. He became interested in urban agriculture when he lived in Boston. There he met Emily, and together the couple worked on a farm in Montana.

The couple landed in West Dayton when his parents bought their small farm as a place to retire. “Dad had a workshop and was always fixing things,” Jackle said. “I grew up around an environment that taught you to learn how to fix something when it breaks.”

Thanks to a single class in welding he took at a trade school, he has been able to bring life to much of his old, rundown equipment.

“A lot of farmers don’t have a lot of machine shop experience, and welding plays a key part in my refurbishing,” he said. “I use my mechanical and electrical skills to build something a lot cheaper than going out and buying a new farm apparatus.

“Sometimes when you’re fabricating things, you take something that already exists and alter it a bit to suit your own needs. At times I’ll go online and find the part I need and replace it myself.”

The family’s 1940 Ford tractor runs smoothly thanks to a refurbished power steering pump. The repair to a head gasket keeps his 1971 Farmall hydrostatic tractor operational. A repair to a toolbar mount on his Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor saved roughly $1,000. A homemade vacuum seeder and cone seeder cost less than $40 to build.

The couple’s 40-year-old flail mower is ideal for vegetable and cover crops. It needed a new gear on the side of the machine, so the Jackles bought one on eBay for $250 and used a little welding on the gadget.

Economical is the way to go for Ben and Emily, who even use biodegradable paper mulch rather than long, expensive strips of plastic.

“When you get into organic agriculture, there’s not a lot of implements that do the job,” Jackle explained. “With corn, soybeans and wheat, there’s the standardized equipment for row spacing and the like. With no-till stuff, maybe you only need to go through the field once.

“There’s just not a lot of infrastructure for farms that are on the large edge of a garden and the small edge of a farm.”

Mile Creek Farm is located at 10786 Mile Road in New Lebanon. The Jackles can be contacted by calling 937-687-8762. And visit their website at www.milecreekfarm.com