My favorite hoe was always the cheap hoe, though now that I have a little money in my pocket, perhaps a high class hoe would be something to try....if I had a death wish.
Gardening, Alaska Style.... The lady in the Cab is Haley DesRosiers, Master Bladesmith, and she is getting here garden started for the summer....
My 64 case backhoe died, terminal expensive cylinder disease, and do I miss it. It takes 3 hours of chainsaw, wedge, and burning to half way remove a stump that I could totally remove in 10 min with the hoe. If you wish to survive on a garden in New Hampshire and are reclaiming old farm land, you had better use a hoe now. Save your back now and maybe your life later. A hoe, unlike a bulldozer, doesn't remove all the dirt and pile it and a neat pile with all sorts of rock etc. It will also pick up rocks, make nice walls, or in extreme cases allow you to dig a hole and roll that huge rock out of sight and out of the way. I like the picture of the woman and the hoe, my wife was raised on a farm and we nearly fight over whose turn it is to use the tractor. My view of machines is that they are the great equalizer. I have known a 100 lb woman that is much better backhoe operator than I am. She has all the strength needed to run the hoe and a sense of space and distance that I never will have. It is quite a skill to be able to reach out 20 feet and down 8 feet and use the controls to place the bucket where you want it within an inch or two.
Yup the old Case sets disabled as we type, at another place and distance that requires more time and money than I have at the moment. For me the addition of the "extend-a-hoe" as an accessory was a great use for those extra reach jobs. Add to that the Hydraulic Rock Cracker and you could do work that some would need explosives for.
It is amazing what you can do with hydraulics, it is a science in itself. It is also amazing how little it takes to mess up a system with 3000 psi. Had a leak one time that would leak 55 gal in an 8 hour shift. Put in a drain pan and filtered it pumped it back in the tank until we finished the run. I have seen systems killed by a hair caught in a shuttle valve and seen systems that have run 70 years with no problems.
My uncle lost a backhoe do to a hydraulic leak. Blew a line on another man's property, and told him he would be back in a few days to repair it. It stretched to a week, and when he showed up to fix it, it WAS GONE. The man and a friend had torched it into manageable pieces and scrapped it. My uncle called the cops, but got no where. Because it was not operational, it was ruled as "abandoned" and no recourse remained to collect for damages. (Screwwed)
These are just a few of the hoes in my yard. They are not mine but I have full use of them while they are here. they belong to a landscaper that also stays on my property.
@Cruisin Sloth I would make a comment about your wife in the trench doing manual labor while you stand around taking pictures but best not.
I work all machinery , from sailboats-2-heilos , Wife works all manual labour stuff , she has 4 wheelbarrows , and will NOT use any tractor. I lied , she will use a log splitter (We have 4 ) but Im thinking thats about it. She is not very mechanically thinking & is a south-paw . (she always thinks screws go in Anti clockwise) but I'm helping with the screwing deal !!
I could see making one of these from an old shovel. Then, you'd have an area to push with your foot if more pressure is required.
