Viewing Jasper Mountain 10

Dad's "tiller" was a big machine like the front end of an Allis-Chalmers tractor; it had water-filled tractor- tread wheels that were as tall as I was, and pulled a small but quite real single-share moldboard plow. It lasted for two decades.

Our first tiller, bought from a hardware store in 1977, lasted just two years shy of two decades. We practically farmed with these machines, as none of us seemed to know when we have enough ground in cultivation.

Our second tiller, however, we used for about twenty hours, and then it died of a heart attack. I know the sound of a piston rod giving up the ghost, but I'm old enough to remember that I should be hearing that sound after three or four hundred hours or more, not twenty.

Our old chain saw, a 1979 Husky, gave good service for over twenty years.

The new saw, on the other hand, lasted two weeks.

We think we see a pattern here, and it's one that encourages us to rethink our original reaction to Wendell Berry's advocacy of farm horses and scythes.

There comes a time when plunking down good money for gadgets that look like labor-savers but ain't -- because they are going to refuse to do said labor -- begins to look like money spent foolishly.

Pick up a garden magazine and the bright ads rave at you about the labor you will save with this machine or that machine, but in the end, Thoreau was right.

He said: "...I start now on foot, and get there before night....You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there sometime tomorrow...if you are lucky enough to get a job in season."

If you have to work for two days, or, ten, or twenty, to earn a tool and it lasts you two, ten, or twenty days under normal conditions, well, you really ought to have investigated the corresponding hand tool and saved half your time!


Yes, yes, the woman's new tiller is busted and she has taken to philosophizing as she turns over the garden with a hay fork and blisters her soft hands: sour grapes we used to call it, per Aesop and his fox.

But the blisters heal, the hands toughen, the body begins to slim down a bit, and if there's any sunshine to be had, some vitamin D into the bargain. Hopefully, she begins to look like one who one understands work

Meanwhile we're beginning to see articles hither and yon about the disproportionate share that tillers, lawnmowers, chainsaws, edgers and the like have in the despoiling of the air we breathe.

Perhaps -- just perhaps -- we're onto something.

We live inverted sods resprout at the first hint of rain whether tilled or spaded; the rain comes almost daily this time of year. So we took to spreading black plastic to kill sods. And lately we use cardboard with straw piled on top, which really seems to bring on the worms and their rich castings.

Technology shouldn't be regarded as either our savior or our nemesis; the key is to use as much of it as necessary to get done what needs to be done, and no more. Now would be the time to rant about skimobiles and power boating, but I'm going to presume that the gentle reader would regard this as preaching to the converted -- take it as a compliment to your good sense.


As our power tools fail us, one by one, we become more appreciative of our hand tools, and abuse them less and less. We have several hammers, a straight 22 oz., a curved 16 oz., a tack hammer, a ball peen, a masonry hammer, and a couple of sledge/maul monsters. We've become aware that these are not all interchangeable, and discovering why a tool is shaped a particular way is very pleasing.

Our brace-and-bit, plane, bench vise and bench grinder are all over fifty years old and going strong. The grinder is electric, but it's an old electric, sealed, never needs oiling, perfectly balanced. It can heat up an edged tool very quickly, and we've learned to keep a can full of water handy to sizzle things in, so they won't turn into butter.

The bench vise and grinder are rather large. As women, this was a deliberate choice. Not having the same upper body strength as the guys, we needed bigger stuff because the equipment's strength or weight made up for what we lacked in personal leverage. We keep pipes of varying size and length to slip over handles like the one on our vise so as to give the handle that little bit of extra torque that the he-men provide with their shoulders.


As time passes, we use the grinder less frequently, instead locking tools into the vise and leaning over them with a sharp bastard file, knocking the file against the bench from time to time to shed filings. A file takes a little longer, but it won't destroy temper and we can keep a clean eye on the angle of the cut.

We keep five shovels. There's a round-pointed long- handled shovel for digging and ditching, a square-point for scooping up loose material from a flat hard surface, a d-ring-handled tree planting shovel with plates welded to the step for heavy-booted work, a more delicate d-ring shovel with an eighteen-inch blade, suitable for bulb work, and a British spade -- a cheap imitation actually -- but useful for light sod-cutting and for mixing things in the wheelbarrow.

One finds, after time, the point of balance with which a shovel can be wielded all day without undue fatigue. After more time, one becomes aware of the subtleties, such as when it's time to file the blade, or how one can put more pressure on a handle that has been linseed- oiled in the last year than can be put on one that hasn't. One begins to take the trouble to carry a shovel to the shade when not in use, on discovering that sun damages the handle faster than rain.


Different people have different tool preferences for different techniques.

Beloved carries around a feed sack with a pillow in it,

upon which she kneels to work in the garden with her ever-present trowel. I use the bulb spade and a t- handled dibble stick, which I made from the pearwood handles of a defunct pair of grass shears.

She marks her rows and hills with little stakes and yards and yards of string, and sows by hand. I do beds without rows, dropping seeds down a four-foot length of PVC pipe, from a standing position.

I get a lot of use out of a pair of pruning shears, thirty years old -- a cheap brand, too -- and a heavy duty pair of limb loppers that have outlasted their wooden handles. I drove the tangs into two three-foot-long three-quarter-inch galvanized pipes, and on these iron legs they have walked with me over the land many times.

To draw out the rolls of stock fencing that have languished for fifty years in the blackberry patch, we use a pair of double block pulleys over a hundred years old, with a hundred foot length of rope looped back and forth from block to block, giving us our own strength four times over. This thing beats a modern "come-along" for speed and distance, if power is not all that's wanted. The rope is new, but that other rope lasted until this year; a mysterious thing, made in a rope-walk, of true hemp fibers, then soaked in creosote by hands long vanished from the earth.

Though it was no doubt toxic, we hated to give it up.

There are two footbridges on the place, as a seasonal creek divides it right down the middle, end to end. Across these we go, summer and winter, with the wheelbarrows. A wheelbarrow is an amazing device that can hardly be improved upon. It will negotiate tiny gaps while carrying hundreds of pounds with ease. We bring straw from the barn a bale at a time with them, feeling our way with our feet, unable to see round the vast loads.

A wheelbarrow imposes a stately gait that adds dignity to any laborer's demeanor.

We bought a five-cubic-foot model at the same time as our old tiller, in 1977, for forty dollars. It has done far more hours of work than the tiller did, and looks fair to outlast us.

The other one came with the place.

Well, actually, we didn't know it was here at the time, and the former owner probably didn't either -- it was deep in the blackberries. We dug it out, bound up its wounds with bailing wire, and found a wheel for it. The thing has handmade handles built for a grip larger than ours, and it wobbles a bit as it goes, but it's still a wheelbarrow, and it does honest labor daily.


Every family should have two wheelbarrows. We pass, sometimes, Beloved and I, like ships in the night, laden with our disparate treasures.