Rural Heritage June/July 2026

Mini Nubians come in many fun different colors! Spots and splotches abound!

proportionate technology. But perhaps, to someone with six children, who farms 30 acres and is looking for ways to increase their farm’s fertility without paying thousands of dollars each year for fertilizer — and who desires to involve their whole family in the life and inspire some of their children to make the farm their own — a team of draft horses would be the most appropriate technology. This question of appropriate technology (or tools) and scale is an important one to keep in mind, especially as we age or face physical injury or limitations — or, as in my own case, both. Six years ago, we began to scale back some of our market gardening due to complications from an old back injury. Since we do not hire outside help, any time one of us was out of commission, the rest of the family felt it during transplanting, weeding and

Still, nearly a decade later, two things still resonate with me and stick in my mind: The first is that the homesteader who wrote the article had realized that to sustain his way of life he didn’t need to quit any of his chores, he just had to perform them smarter and SLOWER. The second thing that stuck with me was his passion and unrelenting drive to continue farming until “the bitter end,” come what may. In a way, everyone’s farm is a workshop in which efficiency can and ought to be examined and perfected. The questions of best practices and proportionate technology must always be asked for the farm’s longevity to be assured. To someone whose children have opted out of farming and for city lives, who works full time and manages 200 plus acres, a tractor (with lights on it!) would seem

June/July 2026

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