The Merry Tiller

Tinfiny Acres came completely furnished with a junkyard. There were motorhomes, cars, boats and motorcycles lying about the place, all in a shocked state of disbelief. When the previous owner died it was like a plug had been pulled, freezing the many projects in situ. I’ve been cleaning up for a few years now yet still the twisted piles of scrap metal and softly rotting sheets of oriented strand board found on Tinfiny’s extensive grounds yield surprise and enchantment.

I was working on a two-Harbor-Freight-trailer-load of broken fiberglass garage doors that had been squatted by a company of freeloading pack rats when I first uncovered the Merry Tiller. Previously, I had seen parts of the thing, the handlebars, maybe a transport wheel and had caught a flash of chrome between the thicket of brush that had found much success around this particular pile of trash. But now the full tiller was exposed to daylight.

And what a tiller it was. The first thing I thought was, “That’s a nice chaincase.” Long and thin with an oil filler hole two-thirds the way up the case there was no comparison to the clunky, surface-floating drives found on lesser tillers. No, this chaincase was made to knife through plowed earth like a long board skeg grooving down a mountainous wave. This chaincase has soul, my brothers.

The Merry Tiller is configured engine-over which places the fulcrum directly over the digging tines. This set up allows minor weight shifts at the controls to precisely control forward motion. Sporting a 5-horsepower Briggs & Stratton powerplant this tiller should be able to plow granite, slowed only by the drag bar’s deep bite into the soil.

The engine is a real Briggs & Stratton, the one with the straight carburetor and the diaphragm, crankcase-pressure-operated mini-dip tank inside the gas tank. On the left side is a huge reduction pulley and belt-tension clutch assembly. The frame consists of two heavy angle iron sections bolted together at fortuitous locations.

Having said the above, I’ve never actually started the Merry Tiller. I’ve got a bit more debris to move in order to wheel the tiller out into the open The thing is a classic and might be worth more money in its barn-find trash pile. Maybe I could hire a few archeologists to remove the ground surrounding the Merry Tiller and ship it complete to the new owner.

Who am I kidding?  Unconsciously I have shouldered Tinfiny Ranch’s legacy to the world. His projects have become intermixed with my projects. I can’t tell which project belongs to whom. I’ll never sell the Merry Tiller. It’s like a vintage Barbie doll in her original, unmolested packaging, except this one is gas-powered.