One good way to rob yourself of forward momentum when digging post holes:

Stare in shock at the first hole you’ve dug while water from some as-yet-unidentified water pipe gushes out of said hole and onto the lawn.

…then [we] started hitting a root. Hmm. Big root. Keep giving it a try.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. GLURSH.

That’s when all the water started coming up out of the hole.

We sat there and stared at it for a while. But — but — I called the utility folks about the water lines! They said as long as we weren’t going down below four feet, it would be no problem.

I swear, it felt like we hit a root, which opinion was bore out by the big chunk of ROOT that came auguring up out of the hole shortly thereafter, so we kept going and…

Well, as the man said, GLURSH.

We didn’t get as much done as we’d anticipated. I think that was overly-high expectations. At least on my part that was brought on by my experience in setting fence in my youth.

But, as we worked on the fence, I would start to remember things like “wow, this hole digging goes a lot faster when the augur’s attached to the back end of a tractor” and “oh yeah, there were two guys that were doing just this the whole time, that sped things up a lot” until, by the end of the weekend, I clearly remembered the six people who had all worked on the farm fencing, whereas I had before dimly recalled only myself and Dad.

Still, the posts are in and look good (nominally good, at any rate, which had-to-be-there joke I will leave Dave to explain), the worst of the physical hoo-ha is behind us — now comes the precision work that will allow us to make up for minor discrepancies in post placement…

…should be a piece of cake.

* - Certainly not the only sexual double-entendre that saw the light of day while Margie watched Dave and I dig holes, drop in and center posts, hammer and screw in wooden braces, and pour cement. Sadly, it was probably the most subtle.

I was digging post holes down south of Eugene OR one summer. Then in late December when it was *really* raining a section of fence needed to be fixed in some bottom land where in the summer the water table was 4-8 inches under the surface.

Now if anyone ever wonders why Columbia makes $400 coats with multiple water barriers...it's because Columbia is un Oregon and it does rain.

We're out there, my and a full blown alcoholic sheetrock contractor friend, in 20 mile an hour rain along with the coldest heaviest Oregon rain I've seen. '95 was the winter of the 30 foot above normal Willamate River and F-15s parked on golf course high ground in case the Columbia breeched the dike and took out the International Airport and Air Guard base like it did in '47.

The rain had soaked at least two of the three water barriers and was working on the last one. We'd dig the hole and it would fill right back up before we could set the post. Some quick dry cement designed for this application by Ross Island Sand and Gravel wasn't drying quick enough. At one point a large frog hopped up from a hole, through the cement. Sat there until the gray muck was washed off, gave a pissed off ribbit and left.

We finally got those damned posts set though.

The worst was the drops past the brim of the hat and hood that would hit the tip of the nose when ones hands were full.

Well at least our weather was quite clement -- sunny but temperate.

The (overly-labored) explanation of the "nominal" coment can be found here.