Annie’s All iin one and pioneer homesteader

Wally, any reason you just don’t post the comparison between the two and your review of the Homesteader right here on this thread?

I am very interested to hear about anyone’s experience with the Annie’s All in One. I’ve looked at all of their literature and it seems like this is something that one person and one horse could handle.

I an interested in hearing about its durability.

The design on the All-in-One is simple and while it might not fit every single application I love using ours. It is easy to handle and Annie designed it to work with a single horse. We use it with our team of oxen and the simple hitch point and design works great for us. But with oxen it can’t be used solo so it always takes two people to run it. The quality is very high, which is mirrored in the price. She did not use cheap steal to build it and it is an heirloom quality tool, which is something you don’t find much any more. I think the All in One is great but it may not fit everybody’s system. So you just need to evaluate what you want to do.

I’ve been strongly considering the All-in-One with ripper for my quarter pony. I’m looking to move to no-till/min-till with a roller/crimper over a cover crop, then the ripper through to furrow for planting. Is a 750lb pony capable of this kind of draft? And I was wondering if the cover crop residue building up on the shank might be an issue. If so, could I get the jointer assembly for the Pioneer walking plow and clamp it on ahead of the ripper tooth to cut the residue for the shank to pass through? Or would it be better to mow the cover crop instead of rolling it for the ripper to work? I’m totally open to suggestions, including better methods and implements than the ones I think will work.

P.S.- I would guess that it might be a little to much for one pony. JMHO

Carl nny

Having a pony a little smaller than yours, and having seen the All in One in person but not used it, I would say that as a general tool, your pony could do a lot with it. As far as ripping through rolled cover crops, I think that depends on how dense the residue is, what your soil is like, and how deep you are trying to get. I think for that task, a slightly heavier tool like an I&J Walking Plow, Pony cultivator, or the new One Horse Toolbar (see thread from a month or so ago) might stay in the ground better, and all are of a scale that a Pony can pull. I’ve been debating the merits of these tools in my head for a while now, but haven’t decided on one yet, so can’t give experience based advice (so far my pony’s just been using old walking cultivators).
-Tevis

Having used the single shank ripper with my oxen I would think that it wold be too much draft for a pony of that size. I am not experienced with horses but I think it might be too much. I often find with my team of oxen that there is what they can pull (maximum) and what the should pull (minimum) and then the honest work level (somewhere in between). When I am using the animals in the garden I want the draft level to be on the lower end of their capacity. In other words even if an animal can pull it you don’t want them using their full exertion to do garden work. Garden work should be done at a nice easy pace and it also needs to be done for longer periods of time. Sure my team can pull a heavy log for a short distance and I want to use that training to build the animal up so that when I hitch the garden tools to them that they can have a nice easy but honest work session. In my experience (which is rather short) animals don’t enjoy walking in circles all day, so if you are adding in high levels of exertion they will quickly tire mentally and physically.