I bought a broadfork last year from a different source, and it has been amazing. I did opt for steel handles though, as I was afraid I'd end up breaking wood ones. I'm a woman in her 60s and this is much easier on me than trying to till or double-dig fresh ground. I love that it's quiet and slower, too, as I appreciate my time in the garden more that way. Maintaining the ground with it is a breeze by comparison!
meadow creature makes the deepest broad forks14- and 16" deep on the market . a limiting factor fro a 64 year old is shoulder integrity. this new hack which allows deeper broad forking with no shoulder strain : I took a roll of 2" nylon mesh (quite light weight) I cut off approximately 10 feet and tied the ends to the tips of the handles (double half hitch) then sunk the 14" fork as deep into the compacted earh as it would go (this took about 1 minute of intensive rocking as it was so hard . Then I walked back and put the 2" webbing behind my butt then gently threw my butt down and back and the handle effortlessly came back from 90 to about 70 degrees from there gripped the handles and I I effortlessly brought them back to 45 degrees bringing in a satisfying chuck of ground (busting te bard pan)BTW I keep the nylon webbing in place with rubber bands .
Have one. Love it. I use it every season to prepare my outdoor holes on my cannabis farm. Works amazing if your a notill grower such as myself. It does NOT disturb or disrupt the biology in the soil in any negligible way. It “softly” aerates your soil just enough and does not kill your worms.
Go ahead and use your fork! Gardening is tough enough! I plant my rows far enough apart that I even weed with my tiller. As my 95 year old Greek friend says: "Sometimes my heart say go, but my assa say no!"😂
The world is cooling down as we approach a solar minimum ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_minimum ) -- so we can use all the greenhouse gases we can get in Canada. The broadfork in a great implement for getting land into agricultural production.