Rural Heritage October/November 2025

KH: It's interesting at Tillers because it actually kind of depends on the people who are around and available because, really, the main product of the farm is people learning new skills and gaining knowledge. That's the main output of the farm so if there's someone on the farm and if they have a specific goal . . .if they want to learn more about donkeys, then we'll figure out how to incorporate the donkeys that week into all the tasks that we do. If they're more interested in oxen, then we will do our best to incorporate the oxen as much as possible, so it’s really the learning outcomes- the people that are present go into a lot of that. Next to that it really is just necessity and time management. You want to do whatever is most efficient and so really I like to have a couple of tools set up for specific tasks; I like to have one cultivator Kody with Pollux and Tillers’ prototype planter 2025.

and have it set up for hilling potatoes. I dial that in and that's that tool’s job for the rest of the year. I'll have another cultivator dialed in for cultivating sweet corn- with the appropriate sweeps and appropriate spacings- and now that is that tool’s job for the year. I spend time prepping the tools in the spring, then it's just a matter of selecting the animals that are well suited for that specific task. RC: What’s your favorite task and either single or team of animals to do it? KH: (sighs) Oh boy, my favorite task with the donkeys would be weeding- over the row cultivating. Oh no, that's such a hard question. With the capacity of the animals that we have here, the donkeys are actually the best at planting because they're just a little more slow and steady than the horses and they're quiet

Rural Heritage

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