Today was a really fun day. First off we got to actually sleep in till 10, which was nice considering the pace we have been going on this trip. More importunely though and more fun we went to a field day sponsored buy Practical Farmers of Iowa. The field day was taking place at Blue Gate Farms, which was a small vegetable growing operation, and would focus on 2 wheeled tractors. At first I had no idea what a two wheeled tractor was, and after listening to an interview with the owner of Blue Gate Farms I was even more confused. Instead of doing the logical thing and looking up what a two wheeled tractor actually was, I decided to forget what technology was and wait the next hour in the van trying to figure out what these thing possibly could be. Like me I’ll leave you wondering while I talk about Blue Gate. It was started by a husband and wife team that had no experience farming, and they started with the vision to start a small organic vegetable farm. They currently have about 6 acres, and up until this last year they had been doing it all by hand (they literally used basic hand tools to farm 6 football fields of vegetables, thats some hard dedication). This last year they learned about and then started using two wheeled tractors.

A two wheeled tractor is best described in a picture (which there should be one somewhere on this page), but using words imagine a riding lawn mower that was cut in half, had handles attached, and can pull miniature versions of regular conventional farm implements. Up until today I had never new such a thing had existed, and initially I thought that some company must be getting rich selling these things two all the new small farmers starting out. I was of course wrong because two wheeled tractors were created in the early 1900s and the ones that are still around and used today are from the 40s and 50s, and there are few companies that actually still produce them today. These things were so cool because it gave small farm operators the equipment that conventional farmers had, just on a smaller scale. I thought all of this was ver cool because not only were these tractors helping small farmers be more efficient, these same farmers were discovering and restoring these lost tools.

I think this field day really showed a lot about the small farm and organic movements in America. It showed that the people that are starting these farms will work them with what ever tools that have to make them work, and they will also use whatever technology they can to help in this process. Blue Gate Farms really shows that when people have a dream they will make it work, the owners used only hand tools for something like 6 years. They also refurbished decades old technology to help them produce better quality products and more quantity of vegetables.