NEW LEBANON, Ohio — Well-maintained and appropriately scaled equipment is essential to a successful and efficient farm. A farmer could purchase the new equipment they need, but Ben and Emily Jackle of Mile Creek Farm in New Lebanon are believers in maintaining, modifying and fabricating theirs.

“We could be a much larger operation but it would not afford as much time to be able to build and modifying the equipment,” said Ben Jackle, who tends to his 32-tillable-acre farm just outside of New Lebanon. “Otherwise, we’d have to secure loans to buy new equipment. We’re saving time and money around here.”

Eight acres of this couple’s land is a certified organic specialty crop farm that produces more than 500 different vegetables and cut flowers.

From a distance it looks just like any other farm, but a closer glance reveals the couple operate 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 planting and harvesting needs.

“I grew up in Chicago, but my roots in ag are there because my mother grew up on a grain farm in Illinois,” Jackle said. “I was a city-slicker and I went to school to become a musician. But when I was living in Boston I became interested in the urban type of agriculture. My partner in this urban agriculture venture was my eventual wife, Emily.

“Together we worked on a farm in Montana and then a farm outside of Chicago. We also worked on a goat dairy in Hawaii. We’ve been all around, but ended up in southwest Ohio when my parents bought this farm as a place to retire. Dad had a workshop and was always fixing things. 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’s 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,” Jackle said. “I use my mechanical and electrical skills to build something a lot cheaper than going out and buying a new one.

“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.”

His 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 tool bar mount on his Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor saved him nearly $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 Jackle bought one on eBay for $250 and used a little welding on the item.

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,” he said. “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.”

In addition to mixed vegetables, this small farm produces and sells cut flowers. In keeping the plants fresh the couple uses small house air conditioners to cool them at 40 degrees Fahrenheit in two separate coolers rather than use an expensive, commercial type of compressor.