For most smallholders, 'calling a man in' is a last ditch option - unless it's a friend with a skill who helps out on a quid pro quo basis. By nature, smallholders are people who do things themselves, be it building, animal work, mechanics or crops. So smallholders should, by nature, be workshop people. But very many are not. They see their skills in animal husbandry, horticulture, bee keeping and not in carpentry, metalwork and mechanics.

Yet the workshop can make an incredible difference to the way their holdings work. If you do your own car servicing, changing oil, filters and perhaps brake pads, it is only a small step to keeping your tractor serviced. Similarly, making a timber shed, hen coop or calf hutch is a small extension of the skills used to put up shelves. These jobs need a place where they can be done, and that's the workshop.

It's surprising how quickly you can gain confidence to making useful equipment for the holding. Major skills such as using a grinder, welder and other power equipment are soon acquired once their value is appreciated. For me, a six-evening welding course provided the skills to go on and make and adapt al kinds of useful things. The same is true for many thousands of others in smallholding and small time farming.

There's real satisfaction in building something you use regularly on your holding. It may be as simple as a special barrow, or a tool like a wire or netting strainer. It could be a hydraulic log splitter, or a transport box designed to keep all your fencing materials and tools in. Or what about a rear transport box which mounts on the ATV? A set of steel sheep panels to form a raceway or a make up into lambing pens? Or a bale spike for the tractor loader? It only takes a small amount of time in the workshop to create some useful low-tech tools that can make a real difference to vegetable and crop production.

All, however, have one thing in common - they started in the workshop.

Every workshop needs a combination of tools, skills, imagination and time. You'll invest in tools if, with your skill and time, they make something useful. In the same way, you'll spend the time getting extra skills if it leads to some measurable gains. Your holding can be very small and part-time, but there are always jobs which can be simply mechanised. Home made equipment may look slightly less professional than what you get from the farmer's co-op, but is in a completely different financial ballpark. Paying off a £175 hay rack or ring feeder takes some time - covering the costs of one made using £80 of materials takes less. Paying off a feeder costing £10 in materials is easy. At this price you can afford to make more, giving the stock more space to feed.

Some workshop knowledge is no more than common sense; more comes from magazines, books and, increasingly, the Internet. And then you can look over an expert's shoulder. "So that's how it comes apart!" Many people acquire workshops skills by taking courage into their own hands. They get a welder, and start experimenting. They take a broken machine apart and find it's possible to mend it. Here is one good reason for using simple machinery, made to a design which provides reasonable access to the parts which might go wrong, and held together with standard bolts and screws. Older machinery was made like this. Newer stuff is often made difficult to repair, with special parts and difficult fixings.

Getting equipped

Tools today are wonderful value, and the smallholder will buy a great selection for £500. Some readers will throw their hands in the air at this, and then proceed to spend the same amount and more on a simple machine like a trailer they could make themselves. Or they'll get a man in to build a shed and end up paying him a similar amount.

The important thing is to spend money on tools you're going to use.

Here I must make a confession. I'm a metal man. Although I love the sight of a wooden five-bar gate, a paddock with wood rails, and wooden wheelbarrows, I find it easier to make agate using box section, and find it lasts much longer than its wooden cousin.

Welder. The conventional stick welder will be the job you want. Although MIG sets are cheaper than ever, and sold aggressively, they are poor at welding steel which is rusted, painted or dirty - and some of the time this will be exactly what you need to weld. Small MIG sets have less penetration, making the weld weaker. MIG sets are also far more complicated, and need to be used regularly. The wire electrode doesn't store so well and once rusty won't work at all. Torches on the cheaper models are troublesome. MIG welds look perfect but only the largest most powerful sets provide good penetration. They don't work on material which is not clean. Stick welders, on the other hand, use electrodes which last forever provided they are kept dry. The transformer and switch are the only parts to go wrong. There are no motors, wire feeds and the like. You can leave the welder for two years and it will work again without problems. Cheap stick welders often come with leads which are both short and of poor quality. It's worth getting better ones.

Grinder. The 9inch is the man's tool, but most 4 1/2 or 5in models will do as much work with far less danger, and you'll save £20 or more. Disc life is longer with the bigger machine, but you can always trade up when the need arises, and still find the smaller machine used regularly.

Drill. The general purpose drill needs a hammer action and a variable speed. Drills generally turn too quickly - if yours has a two-speed range the chances are it spends most of the time in the slow range. If you want to drill large holes, 1/2in or more, then the chuck speed needs to be quite low. Drills come with a range of chucks. The standard 13mm with a key (tape the key onto the flex by the plug so it doesn't get lost and you have to unplug when changing bits) is the one to go for. Keyless chucks don't tighten as well, and SDS chucks take special bits which cost more and have to be bought new.

Spanners. Sockets and spanner sets cost no more today than they did 25 years ago, so there's hardly an excuse for not having the right size!

Hand tools. Hammers and pliers and Allen keys and files; centre punches and snips... the list is obviously endless. Tool kits are useful, but stay away from the cheapest containing tools of the lowest quality with a minimal life.

Buying tools - quality. There's no earthly point in buying professional quality designed for a lifetime of continuous use, and priced accordingly. Neither is there any sense in getting ones so poor they will need constant replacement.

Quality and price are, however, not synonymous. Some shops in the High St work on margins so high they make indifferent tools expensive. Mail order reduces the cost, but increases the waiting time. Buying tools on E-Bay can provide even better prices, but far greater complications in terms of payment, delivery and so on. A good start is a catalogue such as ScrewFix ( 0500 41414 Freepost Yeovil BA22 8BF www.screwfix.com Dipping into their catalogue or more than 8,000 products is easier and more rewarding than a route march around an out of town shed.

Finding inspiring cost-cutting ideas. Over time I hope to show readers of Smallholder Magazine a wide variety of useful things which can be constructed in the workshop. Many of these have been featured in Practical Farm Ideas, the publication I started in 1992 as a means by which farmers can share innovations and cost cutting ideas. As a farmer myself I worked out dozens of ways to make life easier, safer and cheaper, and thousands of other farmers do exactly the same. The problem is we don't get together, so our ideas are kept hidden on individual farms. Over the years it has helped introduce thousands of farmers to thousands of cost cutting ideas they would never have thought of themselves.

The workshop budget:

180 amp Arc welder £120; Headshield £12; Cables £15 Angle grinder 4.5inch £30 Percussion drill £80 Socket set £25; spanners £25 Assorted tools £50 TOTAL: £357

Mike Donovon is the Editor of Practical Farm Ideas which costs £14.25 a year from PO Box 1, Whitland SA34 0AR Tel: 01994 240978 Visit www.farmideas.co.uk