Fossil Abstinence: Shovels

Fossil Abstinence – Legacy Shovels and Solar Collectors

A shovel – the pointed, long handled variety used to dig and fill holes can be a symbol. My grandfather introduced me to his favorite tool he called a “Schaufel”, German for shovel. He not only used his for digging, backfilling, and cleaning up after dogs but also for preparing beds for plants, hilling potatoes, turning compost, dispatching weeds, and edging flowerbeds, gardens and tree trunks. He had come to the US from Germany in 1928 to make his fortune with his German Shepherd dogs and a few years later sent for my grandmother and their 14 year old daughter.

In the early 1930’s he won at a major show with one of his dogs but when this champion and another were summarily stolen, his wife urged him to find other work. Too many folks were abandoning dogs at their boarding kennel and loss of his prize stock devastated their income.  In these depression years, she resorted to cleaning homes and got him to earn money with his phenomenal “green thumbs”. He spent long hours beautifying properties nearby and trimming grass. He was too shy to present bills so she took care of finances. Word spread and soon he had more work than he could handle. Their daughter grew up, married my dad and two of us kids spent 1950’s summers with our grandparents. We tried to help, but, looking back, more often were a nuisance. But they didn’t seem to mind.

Often, after a quick breakfast, we’d grab a pail of worms, jump into what we called his “spider” truck because it had wheels with spokes, and head out. Worms came in two varieties: night crawlers that we’d catch with the help of a flashlight or red wrigglers he would help us dig along the ditch where the kitchen sink emptied into the garden. He’d shovel, we’d pluck worms. Through our grade school summers, he’d typically drop us off at a client’s dock on the lake and we’d fish while he trimmed shrubs, planted flowers and or manicured lawns.  We’d get together for lunch and continue to fish at another dock until time to head home with a bucketful. The big ones our grandmother would prepare and we’d plant the more numerous fry next to vegetables. This latter operation was quick: our grandfather would shove his ever present shovel deep into the soil, rock it fore and aft, and pull it out. We’d drop whole sunfish or fish parts that we didn’t eat into the earth slit and step on the edge of the hole to close it.

Our grandfather spoke few words, in mixed German and English. He primarily used his body, his fingers, his eyes, his smile and his shovel to motion us to come, to get our worms, to bring the fish bucket, or fetch the air rifle. Shooting was a favorite pastime that started with cans and ended with grasshoppers and locusts as targets, often at considerable distances. When we became good shots, he seemed happy to just watch.

My grandfather was also an expert with a scythe. Where folks now use engine powered string trimmers, sickle bar and rotary mowers and brush hogs, he would use his scythe, an Austrian type with a straight shaft and an offset handle. Using this tool he’d trim around trees and fences, cut an acre of hay, or cut down weeds among rocks and along streams. For lawns he used a push mower that had six helical blades, and in later years also walked behind a mower of the same type with a small engine. He never had a rotary mower that burns more fuel and makes more noise than the reel-type. I remember him, primarily with hand gestures and examples of grass blades, say “How even my mower cuts grass, every blade cleanly cut, and how sloppy the adjacent lawn looks – with blades of grass shredded.”

I hadn’t noticed, but I’ve not forgotten. I’ve never had a reel mower and use a large rotary mower with three blades that only cut cleanly and evenly when extremely sharp, a condition I achieve only few hours each year. But when I use a scythe to clear weeds or trim, I think of my grandfather. But it’s his shovel that has become my symbol of an ideal tool: that extends our hands, enabling them to dig long hours without bending over too much, scrape hard materials that would destroy fingernails, and props us up while resting. And it can do this for an entire lifetime.

Although I don’t use my shovel as often as did my grandfather, fifty years later I still think of him when I do. His soil was sandy, without stones, and easy to slice with a shovel. Mine is armored with rocks that deflect a blade so I find it easier to wiggle the tines of garden fork between stones to prepare planting beds, dig potatoes, uncover worms and harvest garlic. The fork doesn’t slice worms and damage tubers like a blade but a shovel works better for prying out burdock roots, harvesting horseradish, distributing manure, preparing asparagus beds and digging other varieties of ditches or holes. If I had to choose only one, it would be the shovel.

I don’t know what happened to my grandfather’s shovel but my dad gave me the one I now use. I had complained to him that the handles broke off my series of shovels from local hardware stores that had weak transitions between the blade and handle. At a yard sale he had found an old variety whose point had been worn to a dip. “This one has a very strong, forged socket that firmly supports the handle. Take care of it and it will last a lifetime,” he said.

And it is lasting. But before giving it to me, to reform the point, he had ground away quite a bit of the blade making it both shorter and narrower than is typical. It’s now an ideal tool that works extremely well prying out rocks and burdock roots, rooting out thistles, planting trees and potatoes, burying animal remains, making lawns level, handling aggregate for concrete, and edging around walls and flowerbeds. Except in winter, when it’s too small for snow, it’s extended my hands, sometimes with help of a foot, almost every week for more than 20 years.  With its help alone, one could grow enough food for a family with some extra for neighbors, dig foundations and wells, and mix concrete or make rammed earth for buildings.

In a different arena, a solar collector can become a tool like a shovel. Just as a shovel extends our hands and fingernails, multiplying what they can do many times, a tool that collects sunlight extends what windows do in a home bringing in light and heat during the day. But a more powerful solar collector can harvest much more sunlight and store it so that it provides heat and light day and night, even through days of cloudy weather. In hot climates, an even better system should also provide cooling and provide power, though not require power from an outlet. And like a good shovel, last a very long time without attention, and certainly not require fuel.

I’m grateful for my shovel legacy that works land so well. And, with the help of many others, hope to create solar tools just as valuable for keeping homes comfortable, providing power for families, with extra harvested energy shared with neighbors. And one day they may become good enough to become legacies that last a lifetime.