Rural Heritage October/November 2025

Kody talks with Amy Coale on a cultimulcher behind Tiller International’s Suffolk Punch team.

In that system, you only prepare the land once per year when you plant the rye and then after that there's very minimal disturbance of the soil. So far, it's been a huge time saver as far as weed control. The true test though of how fruitful that that system is will come harvest time this September. We'll have a great big group of volunteers out here and we will be able to keep the conventional potatoes separate from the no-till potatoes and we'll compare yields. I do expect some yield loss. . . actually, I don't know; I shouldn't have any expectations going into it. It is a huge time saver on cultivation and it just works out better because you're plowing the land and preparing the land in September so your animals have had the entire year to gain their athleticism back and have been used all summer. They are more physically fit for plowing and preparing the seed bed for rye broadcasting. RC: Describe your decision making process when choosing to match an animal to a task. Like, what considerations do you use to say, “I want to do this task with this animal?”

of things we can grow. This year we are growing: dent corn, popcorn, sunflowers, potatoes -both in a conventional model and a no-till model which is quite unique with draft animals- sorghum, sweet corn, a variety of cover crops, pumpkins and watermelon. RC: No till potatoes? Was it simply an experiment, or have you heard about this before. . . or were you trying to try a particular piece of equipment? KH: Exactly. We have a couple of tools that we've developed for international work. One of those is the ripping plow and that's really nice for minimal till systems. I wanted to incorporate that to grow potatoes for the food bank at Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes. Potatoes are an easy crop to grow, one that's very compatible with draft animal systems. I was curious about the method of planting rye the previous year, letting it grow through the winter, using this international chisel plow to cut a seam through the grass and to plant our potatoes directly into, and then come back later with our draft animals and mow the rye grass down to create a thick, heavy mulch.

October/November 2025

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