Virtues

The Virtues of Digging a Post Hole by Hand

The virtues of digging a post hole by hand on a hot summer’s afternoon are at least to be enumerated. I counted my pulse. I have done to little excise recently. It was 117. I was keeping up with the water and the breaks. It was hot. The heat index was over 100 and the actual temperature was ninety two. My goal is one post hole a day, maybe two if I start early, along with other things. On a cooler day I would have done four. It is no mean post hole. While no utility pole, (I wonder how the first telegraph pole holes were dug? I remember Mom watching road work being done from the front window of my Grandmother’s house, the road grader was striping away pavement so that the road could be resurfaced, she commented that the road grader replaced many men with picks and shovels, and mules and wagons to do the same work.) it was a six by six requiring a larger hole than a single bite of my extra sturdy Sears and Roebuck post hole digger and the hole needed to be dug four foot deep. I have an auger that can be tractor mounted but no tractor presently that will carry it. That tractor needs a new clutch but time, money, and interest keep me from it.
We are going willy nilly to the edge of the planets ability to support us with but only a hopeful gesture from us that somehow all will work out. Daily I see ads for new ways to use energy, seemly endless ways to replace good excise, to advertise our wealth with the well trimmed lawns - Frederick Law Olmsted set the standard for lawns and with growing wealth of the nation came the lavish spending of the planets health on green lawns, battery power everything – an electric motor can be eighty percent efficient, so if a drill is plugged in with a cord, twenty percent of that electrical energy is lost, (better yet a muscle powered drill - I do not own one), a battery is about eighty percent efficient and if a battery is put between the drill and the outlet about thirty six percent of the energy is lost plus now there is the environmental load of the battery manufacture and disposal, and the power of personal transportation - when good public transportation might reduce the carbon load on the atmosphere and by some estimates it is already to late, no possible course of action can stop global warming to the point that oceans will not rise and inundate coasts and islands. We are ready to throw the planet away to own gadgets that take away our mental and physical exercise. I saw a shower gadget on one of those house programs that remembers the temperature of the water and which of eight shower heads to turn on for each of several persons – just twiddle the knobs please.
These posts are corner posts for a ten acre field. This will be a high fence to keep the deer out, six foot. This field will be the beginning of the shade tree nursery and needs extra protection from the deer. We rarely see the dear but the evidence is plentiful. I am well past the time I had expected to start the nursery, years. It will become my retirement plan. The first three feet of soil is hard, partly it is well drained and dry, partly it is well compacted silty loam. I dig through the first foot of soil and fill the hole with water and take my first break. When I return, most of the water has soaked in. The digging is difficult but not as difficult. The next foot of soil is out and I refill the hole with water, break time. The third foot of soil yields more easily and the forth foot of soil is easily dug being mostly sand. I set the post and tamp the soil taking care to make the post plumb.
Tomorrow will be hotter and I have other things to do, so the second post and maybe the third will wait for the next day or the day after.

The Virtues of Digging a Post Hole by Hand

The virtues of digging a post hole by hand on a hot summer’s afternoon are at least to be enumerated.
It is virtuous to think of the future
as if it will be,
to plan the spot
were the first piece of sod will be taken out,
to cut back the brush,
to move the soil,
to know what lies under foot.
It is virtuous to know what energy it takes,
to have it flow through flesh that I know,
to feel the sting of the sweat in my eyes
and its salt in my mouth,
to be thirsty and tired,
and to drink water and sit where it is cool.
It is virtuous to feel the soil yield with difficulty,
then with greater ease as the dry loam turns to sand.
It is virtuous to pile soil
so that it can be used again.
It is virtuous to fetch the post
that was laid away so long ago for this purpose,
to feel the certain thud as it finds the bottom of the hole.

The post should stand plumb and at the corner, then the soil replaced in metered portions and tamped so that the post may resist its load.