Organic Gardening
Try to name some gardening tools made specifically for women. Pink ones don't count. Think of any? If you did, tell Ann Adams and Liz Brensinger of New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, because they'd like to sell them. In 2008, they founded Green Heron Tools to offer high-quality, sustainably made gardening equipment to women gardeners and farmers. But they ran into a snag that sounds like the setup to a joke: Two women start a company to sell women's tools, then can't find any to sell.
"We thought that there were tools out there for women; we just had to find them. But we couldn't, " says Brensinger.
Why should women's tools be different from men's? Pink handles aside, aren't tools unisex anyway? Not really. Women use tools—particularly long-handled ones like shovels or hoes—differently than men do. The reasons: A wider pelvis means a woman's center of gravity is closer to her hips, whereas a man's broader shoulders put his center of gravity higher. And proportionally, women have greater lower-body strength than men, but less upper-body strength. This means women rely on the power of their legs, not their arms, for strenuous tasks like digging.
Since most gardening tools are designed by men for men, they are too large for the majority of women, leading to strain, fatigue, and injury. Yet women may not realize just how unnecessarily hard they are struggling, because there have been no other options.
So Adams, 67, a former nurse, and Brensinger, 53, who worked in public health administration, decided to design a shovel. They had been market gardeners for 13 years, so they knew the kinds of stresses gardening puts on the female body. They call what they came up with HERShovel (HERS), a shovel/spade combination that is ergonomically engineered to maximize the power of a woman's body and make digging less taxing.
Adams and Brensinger applied for, and got, a USDA Small Business Innovation Research grant. They studied what changes were needed to make a tool easier to use, so that it compensates for the woman, rather than the other way around.
This doesn't mean simply taking a big tool and making it smaller. It acknowledges women's lower center of gravity and lower-body strength, crucial when bending and lifting. And it takes into account a woman's narrower shoulder span, smaller hands, and weaker grip.
Source: www.organicgardening.com
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If you can take a road trip, check out the wonderful tools, books and plants at Common Ground Organic Garden Supply in Palo Alto: I think it's worth a drive.
My favorite tools which they sell at Common Ground are: Felco Pruner (it comes in a size for small hands), Women's Work gloves (sized for women's hands), imported-from-England Border Fork, and the Woodland Strawberries, or Fraises de Bois, I got there!
I've bought some wonderful books and magazines there as well. Here are recommendations for great gardening books from a friend of mine who is a garden designer and teacher: www
Seeking Community Garden Partnters, NE Pasadena
Seeking Community Garden Partners,
I am seeking others interested in a community garden this spring/summer. I have the small area that get more than 6 hours of sun per day in my back yard in a residential area. I am seeking partners to till the soil, plant, harvest. For fun, connections, and vegetable harvest!!
The area needs to be converted to a vegetable garden with a small group of like-minded gardeners. Share work, expenses, experiences, and then share results. We will need men and women to make this work, someone to help plan the space, dig, plant, water, etc
Meet Bill Kobayashi, the father of Canada's iconic tabletop hockey game (with .. — Ottawa Citizen
The business failed before the war ended, however, and the Kobayashis moved to Kamloops, B.C., where Bill worked at various menial jobs, including in a hops garden, in a lumber camp and on his father's leased 10-acre produce farm.
Gifts for the gardener — Shreveport Times
For those who have unlimited budgets and are planning to give their gardener an expensive gift, garden equipment such as both heavy and light weight tillers (the latter for the frail ladies and the elderly), power mowers, chippers to prepare garden ..
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He shoots, he scores! — Vancouver Sun
But as the Canadian version of slot hockey got its skatehold in living rooms and rec rooms across the country, the person largely responsible for its development and evolution in those first decades was a Vancouver-born man who, only years before, had ..
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Organic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heirloom variety preservation.
Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control. Organic farming uses fertilizers and pesticides but excludes or strictly limits the use of manufactured (synthetic...