"MY SHOVEL....IS MY REAL FRIEND"

by John Brabson, guest writer

RESPONSE TO:  "THE OLD GRUBBIN HOE"

Hi Mil,

What you have is properly called a "cutter mattock".  My equivalent go-to tool (chopping roots on tree trunks, loosening the caliche we facetiously  call "soil", and for shagging out the deep set roots of our local agave variety) is called a "pick mattock".  Neither should be confused with a "pickaxe" which has a pick on one end, but a rather narrower blade on the mattock end.  My mattock is always shiny because it is forever scraping itself against rocks....(fancy that!).

Wish I could (easily) send you a picture of my shovel;  this is my real friend.  In my yard I've got somewhere between 150 and 200 cubic yards of wood chips in deep holes under a thin layer of "soil".  It was supposed to sit there quietly and rot, providing me, eventually, with something resembling real soil.  Of course, it hasn't rained in 2 1/2 years on my property, so the wood chips are sitting in their holes not-rotting, not-even-molding, as fresh as the day I shoveled them in.  Anyway, I showed my shovel to a serious farmer (corn) in the family a year or so ago, and he remarked as how he had a shovel that looked just like mine:  worn handle, loose in the shovel head because of trying to pry one too many heavy rocks, and missing the first four inches or so of the cutting edge.  He told me he broke the point off of his shovel some years back.  I couldn't resist telling him, and it is true, that the four inches missing off the cutting edge on my shovel are there because of wear!  You gotta dig a lot of cubic yards to wear four inches of steel off the point of a shovel!

And don't get me started on my broken pruning shears....  And granddad's carpentry saw....  And the screwdriver with the completely rounded point - one of my most useful tools....

Best, JB

----30----

FOR MIL'S PLACE
by John Brabson
6-20-13