My knees no longer seem indefatigable body parts. Gone are the childhood days of elastic, carefree movement. Here to stay are the days of acutely aware bodily motions, exacted with attentive ears honed in on creaking parts.
Birthday bells marking 30 years of life have hardly rung, yet I am more aware than ever of physical limits in such endeavors as farming. To that end, I’d like to share a couple of tools and movement methods instrumental in preserving mobility for knee-stressing activities.
First, the rocking stool. Tona introduced me to this when I arrived at Fair Mountain. One can sit fully on the chair portion, or half sit/half kneel. Either one helps enormously in reducing knee pressure; it also seems to help the back for long weeding sessions. The rocking base allows you to 
reach far into a bed without going off balance. Let us know if you find where to purchase more of these!
Then the old standby – knee pads. The cushion spread the pressure out a bit on your lovely patella (one knee component I can name). You’ll have to replace them periodically, and always try them out before buying to make sure they are appropriate for you. Clearly the best knee-saving ideas pertain to staying off of them! Switch up your duties, rotating from being on 
your knees to doing non-knee-use tasks, preferably before too much time has passed. This ‘vary your physical movement’ rule is applicable for all farm tasks. Repetitive motion is not good for hours on end, no matter what it involves.
And finally, plan your garden so that you can use tools while standing upright. Obviously this is not always possible; we all have to do hand weeding. But consider planning your planting with relation to using stirrup or collinear hoes. With proper posture, bending over as little as possible, these tools will help preserve your body over the season. Share your favorite knee saver ideas with us!
Related Posts:
Enjoying reading your posts. The rocking stool looks like something I’d like to try. It looks like it is available online through amazon. I did a google search for “garden rocking stool” to find it there.
Hello, and thanks. Yes, the stool is available again. I suppose if you were handy you could concoct one out of a tractor seat and something. Other versions use just a post with a spring off the bottom of the seat and you strap into the whole thing, like a climbing harness, so as not to have one more thing to pick up and move as you go along a row.
Hey Kiddo, How are you? In case you have forgotten (has been a long time) this is Sonya’s Mom.
She ran into your Dad the other day and he was telling her all about what you doing(proud Pappa)and
gave her your website, she is not on line so she gave it to me.I just love it, we have a small garden, very sandy soil so it is hard to grow anything.We ran into a farmer that bought bags of top soil and just planted everything in the bags, so we tried that and it works just great, no weeding or tilling. Just poke holes in the bottom so they will drain, it is working really well for us. I want George to make me a raised bed for strawberries next year. Just so good to read about all your projects