The rector is in the US for a few weeks for a DCU fundraising tour. Before he left, he gave me the thumbs-up to purchase a garden tiller for the campus. It had seemed as though I had been chasing my tail for the last several months, so this was a huge step forward for me. Our initial plan was to try and find an industrial-quality, rear-tine tiller. I had seen a lot of front-tine tillers (even some with Honda engines) in my wanderings in Ukrainian tool stores, but never one that seemed very heavy-duty. When Berny Wiens (Canadian ag. Consultant) was here last weekend, he told us how a tiller that would mount on the back of the campus’ 25-horsepower tractor would be a much better fit for the project this year as well as for potential expansions. So we have shifted our search to that.
As I mentioned above, I had never seen a rear-tine tiller here and I thought I was simply not looking in the right places. Yesterday we set out searching for a tractor-mounted tiller and I realized such tools might not be sold here. In North America, such accessories can’t be purchased on every corner, but they are by no means difficult to find. Google “tractor rotary tiller” and you’ll get over 16,000 matches. We searched the “agriculture base” in the area and everyone seemed to think that no such thing existed. They seemed to think that a plow and field cultivator would serve our purposes. Let me just mention here that, like the machinery they were selling, these places were probably reminiscent of the rural mid-west in the 1950’s (even though I wouldn’t really know from personal experience).
The maintenance worker who was driving me around and helping me talk to the salespeople seemed to want to settle for buying a $300, home-made, 2-bottom plow that our tractor was supposedly able to pull. I was starting to agree with him. It was quite frustrating and I went to talk to Danic (Russian for Daniel) about the dilemma. He is the director of public relations here and has an agriculture background (he is also very helpful). Even though he had never heard of or seen a tractor-mounted rotary tiller, it really interested him and he typed the Russian translation in Google Ukraine (I did not know such a site existed). We found little, but he seems determined to find one in more agricultural central or western Ukraine. I hope that we will find success quickly, because planting time is rapidly approaching.
-Dave
