what a joy and a blessing it has been to get to work with these animals. cows in particular are the most wonderful companions and friends.
one thing i didn’t expect about working with livestock was how dynamic of a relationship it can be. to the individual animals and to the herd one’s relationship changes and evolves each day

pretty little highland

with a family cow or on a small dairy, brushing each cow and spending time with her before milking is a big part of this relationship. our biodynamic preceptor, the great Manfred Klett, really emphasizes the importance of taking the necessary time to meet this need of the cow

decided today to work on creating a small educational experience, “Brush and Love Your Cow”, which will give us a chance to really research the subject as well as we can, also to then share it with others

if there are any cows in your area that are used to being handled, visit ‘em and see if Gandhi wasn’t right !

“…The cow is the purest type of sub-human life. She pleads before us on behalf of the whole of the sub-human species for justice to it at the hands of man, the first among all that lives. She seems to speak to us through her eyes: ‘you are not appointed over us to kill us and eat our flesh or otherwise ill-treat us, but to be our friend and guardian’.

“The ancient seer, whoever he was, began with the cow. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more forcible because it is speechless …“

Yes, Hug a Cow Today!

see?

a lot of pro gardeners carry 2 tools on their bodies all day: felco hand pruners (that’s another post) and some version of the “hori-hori” gardening knife. the ones that taught us to garden do, and we love our hori-hori’s like no other tool we use

decent tools of any sort are not easy to find in amerika, don’t know about where you live, but unless you’re fortunate to live near a purveyor of good tools (not walmart or ace hardware, for example) you’re going to be ordering these online

the hori-hori knife

this is a traditional japanese gardening tool. hori-hori means “dig! dig!”

the holster of these is useful too

you can get these from a variety of manufacturers operating in various places

we look for the japanese, carbon steel blade- not a stainless blade of inferior quality. there are good quality stainless versions to be had, but watch out -as always!- for the crappy imitations

Horticulture Guy sells the one that we usually can find and buy. we’ve had 3 or 5 of these. one important piece of advice is to find an agreeable way to colorize your handle, so as not to lose it with your load of weeds or out in the garden somewhere. we use fluorescent marking paint, or tennis-racquet-handle-tape…whatever you like

if your method also protects the wood of the handle against moisture damage, so much the better. that’s the other thing that happens with these, the wood can check and the handle fail if the tool is abused snif

as the hg page mentions, ” For a sharper edge and rust resistant knife see the Stainless Steel Hori Hori knife“.

the stainless version

we’re using ours’ mostly for weeding, and the carbon blade is plenty sharp enough there and more prepared for the occasional prying situation with a deep-rooted weed or when unearthing small stones or whatever gubbish one may come across

we’ve had one of these – the same brand as hg offers. the edge is extremely sharp, sharper than we need it to be and a bit dangerous, at least on our jobsites.

if someone really wants a sharp (sharp!) knife that they can use in the soil, like for slicing a lot of roots ? then this is a great choice. it won’t rust, tho our carbon ones haven’t rusted either. (just don’t leave your tools outside for months at a time!)

the stainless blade is less resistant to bending when undue force is applied to it, is why the other one is our mainstay

-one other factor is the length of the blade. you can find longer-blade versions of the knife; it looks like the stainless one pictured is a little longer than the other. we’ve never wanted the blade to be longer than the basic one so far

as of today the carbon steel one is 20 and the stainless 25 bucks from the horticulture guy – a good price

an interesting alternative

Predator Tools makes a great looking, similar-but-different digging knife. they have 2 models, the 75 <-

and the 85

visit their site and you’ll see that these guyz are passionate about what they do

these knives are popular with rockhounds and relic hunters who frequently have to try and pry stuff out of pretty hard ground

these sell for about 45 dollars, which also looks very fair

(the same family that makes these also makes (a different company tho) the great american spade (and boy is it!), the GroundShark – more about that in a future post…)

here’s a short list of what we do: farm and ranch work; land care; animal care; custom farming; residential and commercial gardening and landscaping

of course references are available on request

know where you live!

based in grass valley, california, we can serve areas of the Maidu, Nana, Patwin, Pomo, and Miwok – or, Truckee to Chico to Santa Cruz.

also contact us if you are anywhere between Eureka and Alaska: we’re coming your way!

this is gonna be great…

[unloading tons of equipment, tools, etc..]

this will be the new home of Message from Yard (formerly at messagefromyard.blogspot.com)

hey its brew-thirty! share one with us…

calder'a ipa - from ashland Oregon - yummy!