June 14, 2008

Received this email yesterday.

Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 1:45 PM
Subject: auger diggers
Hi

To save Don Proctor lots of labor I will rent a gas powered post hole digger but we need at least one other person to help. We need to bore fifteen hole three feet deep at the sheep pasture. These will be for the post for the bean rows. The event will start at 3pm this Saturday at the sheep pasture.

Thanks

Answer Man

Total time depending on the number of people who show up one to two hours



So I showed up, and after about 15 minutes of breaking our backs with the giant sized super villain style gas powered auger posthole digger we came to the conclusion it would not work worth a damn on the hardpan clay so we tossed it in the back of Answer Man's truck and I dug the rest of the holes with the hand auger. No big deal, so don't get the idea that I'm trying to pass it off as a big deal. The whole thing took about an hour or so after I arrived.



Don had already done half the holes with the hand auger prior to Answer Man bringing the gas auger.



This is the least of what Don has done. At least thats the conclusion at which I have arrived. Retired from something and pushing 70 at least, Don was not one of the original members of the steering commitee for the Sumner Community Garden, but called after hearing of the project to offer his assistance. Seems Don has a hobby of sorts. He likes to grow vegetables for the local food bank (Every mans got his own brand of foolishness")and this seemed the perfect opportunity for him to increase his harvest, I suppose. As we worked this afternoon Don mentioned he estimated this particular field would probably produce between 2500 and 3000 lbs of beans.



Anyway, it seems Don has been busily preparing fields I didn't even realize existed for planting. He has tilled. He has weeded. He has gone out into the community and found people willing to donate loads and loads of seed, twine, concrete, and other necessary materials. He has even constructed reinforced concrete posts to place at the ends of the bean rows, and it was these posts that would stand in the holes we were digging today.



After finishing the holes Don and the rest of us stood one post at each end of each row of beans. Here is a pictuer of Answer Man posing as Don works hard to insert a post.


We then ran two wires, one at the top of the posts and one about 6 inches from the ground, from one end of the row to the other. After this was done Don and I proceeded to run the twine. The twine had already been wound onto a premade (by Don) bobbin so one of us stood on one side of a row while the other stood on the other side. An end of the twine was tied at the top and Don would run the bobbin down to the bottom wire and pass the bobbin under to me and I would run the twine back up, passing it back to Don when I reached the top. This we did until the bobbin ran out and Don said, "Well, I guess that oughtta be enough to show the rest of 'em how to do it."

At this point we went home.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!