People have been digging holes since the beginning of civilization.
We buried food. We planted crops. We installed fences. We hid bodies from tax collectors. At some point humanity looked at the shovel and said, “There has to be a machine that makes this easier.”
Harbor Freight heard the prayer and sent me a gas auger filled with rage.
The machine works beautifully until it touches an Ohio rock. Then it stops digging and begins rotating the person. One second you are building a fence. The next you are participating in an agricultural helicopter crash without leaving the ground.
It grabbed the earth, twisted my shoulders and attempted to screw me directly into the property I had just purchased. My fiancé would have found me three feet deep, still holding the handles, technically completing the hole.
I cannot be alone. How are normal people digging hundreds of fence-post holes in rocky soil? Hydraulic auger? Mini skid steer? Post driver? Rock bar? A local teenager with anger issues?
Share equipment, operators and survival advice below. The problem is older than written language, yet I am losing a fight with dirt.
Augers do not have accidents. They conduct demonstrations. The lesson is always that gasoline, torque and optimism should never meet without witnesses. Mine demonstrated this by briefly attempting to convert me from homeowner into fence-post compost.
This dispatch appears in What The F(arm): Sixty Dispatches from an Unqualified Ohio Farmer — $40, half of which turns straight into hay for the horses, the mini donkey, and the baby goats. The presses roll when 100 people pre-order.