Easing Outdoor Chores
Knock out tedious and grungy tasks with gear that really works.
May/June 2007
Oscar H. Will III
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Deere and Co.'s new XUV 850 Diesel offers sufficient payload capacity to qualify as a heavy hauler and enough ground clearance to deliver the load right where you need it.
courtesy Deere and Co.
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One of the best parts about writing this column is that I have the opportunity to look at interesting new power products for the first time, or venerable old performers in a new light. Sometimes that means I travel to the manufacturer to run machines through their paces, and other times it means that I get to do it at the farm.
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Occasionally, I succumb to catchy marketing pieces myself and just buy the stuff to use, which is what I did more than 15 years ago in response to a Mantis advertisement. I had grown tired of getting horsed around by our large (and very capable) self-propelled rotary tiller and, although it seemed a little expensive for its size back then, the Mantis tiller has been a great performer – first for me, and now for a good friend to whom I loaned it about eight years ago.
I don’t think the folks at Mantis meant for their tiny tiller to pulverize three pickup truck loads of hard-pack sheep manure and mix it into the soil of a 1,000-square-foot garden, but that’s exactly what it did within hours of arriving in the mail one brisk October day.
I do know that Mantis expects its machines to provide good service over a lifetime of use, and my old tiller is well on its way to delivering just that. Not surprising, the Mantis tiller (in an updated form) is still available today (about $350 list) and better yet, it is accompanied with several other machines, like the 5-ton electric-over-hydraulic SwiftSplit®log splitter (about $530 list) and the innovative E-System landscaping tools.
Best of all, you can try any Mantis product for a year and return it for a no-hassle refund if you aren’t satisfied. Check them out on the Web (www.Mantis.com) or give Mantis a call at (800) 366-6268 for more information.
Splitting logs and more
I am a big fan of the internal combustion engine for the simple reason that it’s a celebration of human ingenuity and saves untold labor to boot. Generally, when I think about outdoor power equipment, images of reciprocating pistons and powerful little explosions dance around in my head, so I was more than a little curious when I learned that DR®Power Equipment had installed 120-volt AC electric motors on a couple of their log splitters.
DR®is widely known for the robust, gasoline-powered Field and Brush Mower, which easily munches through brush and saplings up to a couple of inches in diameter, so I wasn’t worried that the splitters were handicapped in any significant way. My first thought was that the cord tether would be a drag, but when the good folks at DR®invited me to their test facility near Vergennes, Vermont, last September to check them out first-hand, I didn’t think twice about it.
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