The Farming on Crutches Wheelbarrow

If you are a small farmer or market gardener a wheelbarrow is pretty central to your work – for moving around tools, compost, soil, leaves and produce. Using one is something we take for granted. However, it doesn’t work if you have only one leg or one arm. As you can see in this picture, the only person who can push it is the one with the good fortune to have a prosthetic leg.

During the most recent training course, held in September, a small group of amputees – both men and women representing both those with one leg and one arm – set about designing a wheelbarrow that would work for them and which could be produced as far as possible from local materials. The chosen materials were timber (which had to be purchased) and bamboo (which was growing on the farm). The other key elements were the two bicycle wheels and the forks to hold them. As you can see in the pictures below, the design evolved throughout the training course resulting in the prototype that you can see at the end

Here it is and you can see it being used here by Elizabeth Kargbo who has only one arm and here by Ebenezer John on his crutches. Further adaptations of the original design are anticipated in the light of practical experience.

This is a prototype that is to be tested in the field – when they will be looking at ways of further reducing the cost and improving the weight-transfer – perhaps through moving the wheels to a different position. As the major cost is the (bicycle) wheels it is hoped that, in due course, they can be sourced from one or more of the organisations in the UK that collects and refurbishes bikes. The target is to be able to provide every one of our amputee farmers with such a wheelbarrow.