Tim has a new dancing partner

From last autumn up to about three weeks ago, the ground in our potager was too wet to dig. We had a week of perfect digging conditions. Then suddenly it all baked into a layer of concrete. We struggled to put in the first two rows of potatoes, then I realised that we weren't going to make it without help. Tim later confessed to being about to give up on potatoes altogether.

So I ordered a Mantis Tiller gardening package from Mantis France.

From the Mantis website... on ideal soil... it is an advert

A phone call of confirmation from a lady with the clearest French telephone voice I have ever heard indicated that it would arrive in the following ten days. It turned up the next day. The day after that Tim finished assembling it. Alex Crawford appeared just at the point where Tim was about to try it out. He started the engine, engaged the drive - nothing. The manual was no help. Alex went home, leaving Tim in high dudgeon, but returned a few minutes later with the answer. There was a gap between the clutch case on the engine and the worm gear housing, a known problem easily fixed (apparently). The intrepid engineers applied the fix, and hey, ho and away we go! Many thanks, Alex!

The Mantis will cultivate soil, and till it, and dig furrows, earth up potatoes, dig planting holes, strip turf, mulch weeds...  It's just a matter of changing the tines and attachments around. The remaining potatoes were planted in three sessions, and Tim cultivated and tilled five other beds in between so I could start planting. The "Gardening package" consists of the Tiller, kickstand, Planter Attachment and Plough Attachment. Yes, it cost quite a lot of money, but it has transformed our gardening.
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Mostly, it spits out stones and even quite large rocks. If the stone is a certain size, however, it jams in the tines. You have to turn the machine on its back and wallop the rock until it comes out.

The Mantis is on Tim's left (upside down)

Tim suggests that the manufacturers have missed a trick - a kit consisting of a mallet and a billet of wood, for knocking out rocks...

Wallop! Ting!!

 Across the field we can now see the houses of Moulin de Chevarnay, and a fine weeping willow, rather than an enormous hedge. A much better view!

[Personally, I don't regard "Attilla the Mantis" as a new dancing partner...
she's far too reluctant... I have to drag her around... she wants to go forwards when I want to go back... Tim]

The Mantis tiller works best by being dragged backward through the soil...
doing a "Jim" in our allotment parlance.
Jim was an elderly... even by allotment standards... gentleman who waged war on weeds.
We always wondered how he managed to keep the soil loose between his rows.
Never a footprint!!

He was an early bird...
and was never there when we were...
but we suspected he hovered....
until we actually saw him in action one morning and all was revealed...
he dug or hoed backwards... thus never setting foot on freshly turned soil...
The Mantis works the same way...