This is an exciting time for gardeners. Everyone has been cooped up all winter, seed catalogs are arriving in the mail and nurseries are a beehive of activity. It just seems natural to get outside and plant something.

We must be patient, however. As the old agronomists used to say, “If you are wondering if your soil is too wet to till, you can be sure that it is.” Experienced gardeners know it’s too early for some gardening activities, too late for others and maybe we should just lie down here for awhile until we get our senses back.

The whole process of gardening has changed with the advent of rototillers and the adoption of no-till farming, but some folks still use a plow.

There’s something about the way a moldboard plow slices through the soil that’s just more aesthetic to me.

(The older guys, who farmed with horses, would probably say the old moldboard was even better with a big Percheron up front.)

There’s still something about watching a guy with a new International and a eight-bottom plow pull into a garden that adds fervor to the whole thing. The bigger the tractor and the wider the plow, the more exciting it is.

That’s the way it was when I planted my first garden.

I was just out of college and didn’t have a tractor, so I decided to dig the garden with a spade. I was young and energetic in those days – and not really smart.

We had about 40-feet-by-80-fet of garden space, but I only planned on planting half of it. I had turned only a few shovels of soil when the neighbor came by with his John Deere tractor, pulling a six-bottom plow. “We could take that fence down, and I’d plow that patch up for you,” he said. “It would save you a lot of digging.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I need the exercise. I’ll have this dug up in no time.”

I looked at the neighbor’s big tractor and thought, He couldn’t even turn around in this garden. There’s no point in taking the fence down.

When I was still digging a couple of days later, I began to wonder what sort of flaw in my upbringing caused me to turn down my neighbor’s offer.

Why would a halfway intelligent person decide to turn several hundred square feet of soil with a spade, when the neighbor could have plowed it in no time?

Why would anyone with a B.S. in Agriculture, two courses in basket-weaving and a minor in muskrat-trapping do something like that? I was never the smartest kid in the class or anything like it, but I did pass all my courses.

Then it dawned on me that my college training caused me to do it. I had been off at college for four years: It was so long since I had done any real work, I had completely forgotten what it was like.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.

This farm news was published in the May 2, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.