Last year, Harrison Bardwell, the farm's ninth-generation proprietor, was selling thousands of pounds of cucumbers at a time, transportable by pallet and forklift. By this summer, he was struggling to move twenty-pound boxes of the same product. When he realized that he couldn't recoup the costs of picking, packing, and washing the cucumbers, he stopped. He also gave up pulling from his cabbage field. Gleaners from a local anti-hunger group harvested some of the crops to donate to nearby food banks and shelters.
Compact tractors and mini tillers are essential tools for small farms, allowing farmers to maximize productivity in limited spaces while performing tasks like plowing and planting efficiently.