Trew: Digging post holes by hand was hard work

Among the hundreds of jobs associated with farming and ranching, digging postholes by hand is by far my least favorite. Today, most postholes are dug by equipment powered by tractors, motors and hydraulics. Iron tee posts driven into the ground have pretty well replaced the need for digging post holes. But not so long ago all postholes were dug by hand with a pair of diggers. Of interest is the fact the Devil's Rope Museum in McLean has approximately 60 patented post hole diggers on display all showing different designs and mechanisms to make the job easier. I can guarantee a long hot day on a pair of diggers in hard dry ground will conjure up many ideas to make the dreaded job less work. Among the first post-hole-digger-haters were the old dyed-in-the-wool cowboys who believed any work not carried out on the back of a horse was a sin, an embarrassment and beneath their dignity. If the truth were known, the famous "Cowboy Strike" carried out at Old Tascosa was probably as much in protest of building barbed wire fences as demanding higher wages and better working conditions on the ranches. The new-fangled barbed wire fences of the Old West were a joke at first. When finally accepted as a legitimate ranch improvement it was no easy chore to construct. First, trying to establish the correct legal boundary before building was almost impossible due to the many incorrect early day surveying methods. Once surveyed and staked someone had to spend weeks with an axe and saw in a cedar canyon somewhere cutting fence posts and hauling them to the site...more