{"id":5680,"date":"2022-10-05T17:45:31","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T17:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?p=5680"},"modified":"2022-10-07T00:52:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T00:52:46","slug":"5680","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?p=5680","title":{"rendered":"Tiller Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Earthquake<\/a>
New Earthquake tiller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My sweet wife and I moved into our first humble home a year after making our eternal commitment to each other. I couldn\u2019t wait to get started on my garden. Our home was small but the lot it sat on was decent in size. Santa Clara Oregon is a bedroom community of Eugene and our house sat on what was once river bottom. It was hard as cement and full of rocks. I needed a good rototiller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t have a lot of money to throw around as a young married couple just starting off so cost was definitely a factor when shopping for just the right tiller. I settled on a Craftsman front tine tiller with a five HP Briggs and Stratton motor. It has proved to be a sturdy dependable machine. We have had it for over thirty years now and it starts on pretty much the first pull every time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did have one problem with the Craftsman tiller though. The tines were pretty wimpy with just a couple of spot welds to hold them on. They spun off right away. I had a friend weld two of them back on and they have worked great ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"old<\/a>
old craftsman tiller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another drawback to the front tine tiller was the fact that when tilling up hard soil it will literally beat the stuffing out of you. We lived in that little Santa Clara house six years and finally, at the end, after applying tons of leaves and grass clippings, the soil was soft and manageable. Of course that\u2019s when we moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven years after we were married we had accumulated three little girls and wanted something bigger. We moved to a home on three acre\u2019s outside Salem Oregon. My little front tine tiller had served me well, but now it was time to get serious. My garden now covered a good acre of ground. After considerable research, and drooling, I went out and bought a brand spakin new BCS rear tine rototiller with an eight HP Koehler motor. Man what a beast. It was just what I needed for our new little farm. We lived there in Salem for ten years and after spreading literally tons of compost the soil was rich and loamy. Again, that\u2019s when we moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we live in Ashton Idaho on a double sized lot. My garden is pretty big according to in town standards but nothing like our previous mini farm. So now my huge BCS tiller sits in our shed waiting for the day I will need it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Old BSC tiller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My little Craftsman front tine tiller after thirty plus years needed some serious attention so I took it into the shop where I\u2019m still waiting for the repair guy to get around to it. Then in desperation I started shopping around for a new rototiller. I discovered that there weren\u2019t really all that many quality tillers out there. The BCS tillers were way expensive so I did not spend much time looking at them. I figured if I wanted a big old tractor type tiller I would just spend the money to get mine fixed though it is not very practical for my small garden. I wanted something smaller and in the five hundred dollar range. There wasn\u2019t much out there for that kind of money except some wimpy little soil churners. The more rugged front tine tillers were more like six or even seven hundred dollars. Then I found this nice rugged little rear tine tiller at Cal Ranch here in Idaho for only $699.00.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Earthquake rear tine tiller comes with a big rugged 212 cc engine with counter rotating tines. There is nothing fancy about this garden implement except it does the job. No frills just thrills. Hey that could be their new slogan. Maybe I better give them a call. Anyhow I thought that for seven hundred bucks that there would be something wrong with it. It had to have some kind of short coming. But so far all it has done is start every time and till like crazy. It\u2019s counter rotating tines really makes a difference. I used it to expand my garden into previous hard packed lawn and it just chewed it up like it was nothing. I love my Earthquake. It also has an instant reverse for getting out of tight spots that is very handy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been tilling up gardens for over thirty five years and I have to say that my little Earthquake tiller is the real deal. I can\u2019t tell you if it holds up from year to year yet, but it sure seems to be pretty rugged, especially for such a low price. Upon reading the reviews there was a couple of negative responses but mostly from folks that didn\u2019t seem to be real familiar with tillers. One guy was upset that it struggled to till up his back forty. It\u2019s not a tractor. It\u2019s just an inexpensive tiller that will churn up your backyard garden no problem, as intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sweet wife and I moved into our first humble home a year after making our eternal commitment to each other. I couldn\u2019t wait to get started on my garden. Our home was small but the lot it sat on … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-garden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/IMG_20220517_162542.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1xN1t-5680","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5680"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5941,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5680\/revisions\/5941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}