The Vermont Ripsower
The VT Ripsower is for land stewards working to grow top-quality forages as they minimize inputs, grow topsoil, achieve maximum infiltration and plant diversity, and heal the land.
The VT Ripsower interplants deep-rooted flowering forbs into pastures for high yield and quality feed for livestock, soil organisms and pollinators.
The VT Ripsower is purpose-built for using in the incremental Keyline soil-formation sequence. Used in a whole-system approach, it contributes to deepening plant rooting depth and functional topsoil.
It shatters compacted soil layers, maximizes infiltration of precipitation and groundwater recharge, and contributes to farm and community security from flood, drought, fire, heat and hunger.
The VT Ripsower simultaneously
Interplants diverse blends of forbs - or any seed blends - into pastures
Primes seed in-furrow with liquid biostimulants and biofertilizers
Shatters compacted soil
The VT Ripsower was conceived and refined on Vermont grazing dairy and beef farms over the last 18 years to meet our specific local needs.
Used with knowledge and skill, the VT Ripsower is a biodiversity and soil-health “defibrillator” in a farmer-led program to leave deep-topsoil farms and watersheds for future generations.
The VT Ripsower pulls surprisingly easily behind most tractors over 50 horsepower.
4WD tractors typically provide the best traction, especially on smaller tractors, but larger 2WD tractors will also do the job.
Clay soils require higher HP tractors than other soil textures, with 30 hp per shank suggested. It’s worth it. Clay responds well and quickly to the full ripsowing process, which incrementally loosens, permeates and structures subsoil with diverse roots to increasing depths with each new ripsowing, and contributes to functional conversion of mineral subsoil to new, aggregated, root and worm-filled topsoil.
Lots of rocks? The VT Ripsower is built to minimize the problem of pulling up rocks that plague fixed-shank subsoilers. 24” shanks jump and swivel around obstacles and instantly hydraulically reset when they hit an obstruction. There are limits - large boulders that the shanks cannot dodge do get pulled to the surface.The VT Ripsower works in soils ranging from compacted clay to stony mountain glacial till, gravel, and silt loam riverbottom.
“The fields we ripsowed went from being some of our lowest yielding fields to being consistently our highest yielding fields, water was more evenly distributed across the land, our grasses stayed green and healthy long after the rest of the farm started to blight, and we saw a massive improvement in species diversity in each of the fields which persisted in the years after we ripsowed.
The soil is now aggregated to 8” where it used to be 3” and we are seeing much less runoff from our fields than we used to.”
- Matt Choiniere
Ready to order? There are two VT Ripsower models to choose from:
The Land Care Cooperative 2024 3-shanker (LCC 24-3)
Recommended for tractors <125 hp
The Land Care Cooperative 2024 5-shanker (LCC 24-5)
Recommended for tractors >125 hp
Features:
Easy hookup, pin-hitch drawbar
Hydraulic depth control wheels for field-work and road transport
Hydraulic reset 24” subsoiler shanks, 30” on center
Ground-driven liquid injector and sponge- feed seedbox for planting annual and perennial seed mixes
Seed openers for placing seed in soil
Press wheels for flattening furrows
Replacement “Wombat” tips and shank guards
When you purchase a VT Ripsower, you get access to ongoing educational events around Vermont, and become a part of a growing learning community of land stewards working to heal land like the future depends on it.
Price:
LCC 25-3: $31,970 plus applicable taxes & shipping
LCC 25-5: $42,607 plus applicable taxes & shipping
Prices and features subject to change
Terms:
50% non-refundable down-payment at time of order
Full payment of balance due upon pickup
Construction may take up to six months, depending on time of order
To place your order, contact Abe at the Land Care Cooperative
