Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.
When we started gardening in Illinois, the second year of our marriage, I wanted a hoe like the one I grew up using. I could not find one in any of the hardware stores. This hoe has two opposite blades with a hole in the center: One blade is narrow, about an inch or an inch and a half wide, and works wonderfully for laying out rows; the other blade spreads to about 4 inches wide and works well for chopping weeds or breaking up rain-packed beds. I have never seen another hoe that could do both. Few other hoes are such heavy gauge steel. When I was a child, Mom used it in place of a tiller since we never had one of those. My sister and I were tasked to beat the dirt out of the grass clods and toss the grass aside. Finally, I asked Dad to get me one and he had to order it. I doubt that he let me pay for it.
We marked a place on the handle with electrical tape to know how far apart to put the garden rows. For years, I would rent or borrow a tiller in the spring and then that hoe did all our gardening thereafter. After I got a tiller, one year it rained so much I could not use it and the ground was turning sour and the plants dying. I stood in mud to my knees, with my feet sunken to the hardpan clay underneath, and hoed the surface to aerate the soil and managed to save our harvest.
A few years ago, the handle rotted some at the end and the hoe tended to rotate so I filled it in with JB Weld. It finally broke after 38 years of service. I searched 3 hardware stores before I found a handle. I put a healthy dose of JB Weld where the hoe would fit and put the hoe in a vise and drove the handle on with a 3 pound hammer. Then I smoothed the JB Weld on both sides and kept rotating it in the sun so it would not drip until it dried. This hoe should be good for 40 years which is more than you can say for me.
I liked that hoe because it was the kind I grew up with. Is that why you like your church?
…to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages has been hid in God who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: Ephesians 3:9-11.
Keith Ward
When we started gardening in Illinois, the second year of our marriage, I wanted a hoe like the one I grew up using. I could not find one in any of the hardware stores. This hoe has two opposite blades with a hole in the center: One blade is narrow, about an inch or an inch and a half wide, and works wonderfully for laying out rows; the other blade spreads to about 4 inches wide and works well for chopping weeds or breaking up rain-packed beds. I have never seen another hoe that could do both. Few other hoes are such heavy gauge steel. When I was a child, Mom used it in place of a tiller since we never had one of those. My sister and I were tasked to beat the dirt out of the grass clods and toss the grass aside. Finally, I asked Dad to get me one and he had to order it. I doubt that he let me pay for it.
We marked a place on the handle with electrical tape to know how far apart to put the garden rows. For years, I would rent or borrow a tiller in the spring and then that hoe did all our gardening thereafter. After I got a tiller, one year it rained so much I could not use it and the ground was turning sour and the plants dying. I stood in mud to my knees, with my feet sunken to the hardpan clay underneath, and hoed the surface to aerate the soil and managed to save our harvest.
A few years ago, the handle rotted some at the end and the hoe tended to rotate so I filled it in with JB Weld. It finally broke after 38 years of service. I searched 3 hardware stores before I found a handle. I put a healthy dose of JB Weld where the hoe would fit and put the hoe in a vise and drove the handle on with a 3 pound hammer. Then I smoothed the JB Weld on both sides and kept rotating it in the sun so it would not drip until it dried. This hoe should be good for 40 years which is more than you can say for me.
I liked that hoe because it was the kind I grew up with. Is that why you like your church?
…to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages has been hid in God who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: Ephesians 3:9-11.
Keith Ward
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