"Sacha" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote:

Wow! That is a SERIOUS hole. Almost like digging to China. The
old
bloke who dug the holes must have been fit.

I think so! He wasn't old all his life, of course. ;-)

Well we've all been in better shape no doubt :-))

But people who
worked on the land then - and now - usually are and were pretty fit.
They
didn't ride around in cars much 'back then', either and there wasn't
the
sophisticated machinery we'd use now to dig such holes. All the
artificial
lakes one sees at e.g. stately homes were dug out by hand
originally, I
would think.

Yes. No obesity then. I suspect tatht he lakes may have been dug
using horses and a hand guided scoop. I'm sure I've sen pics of this
somewhere. Ocassionally one sees these scoops in old farm yards but
they really only held as much dirt as a good sized brickeys barrow
does today.

My husband is 73 and still does a full day's work on the
nursery or digs in the garden etc. and I doubt he'll ever stop.
He's a lot
fitter than I am! We always have a quiet smile when some stripling
of 65
comes in and tells us he's moving to a house with a smaller garden
now that
he's getting older!

:-)) I'm always amazed at the anchor person for Australia's best
gardening show. This bloke was born in Britain in 1927 and is so fit
that he puts the young people on the show to shame. He's forever
digging beds with gay abandon and talking 90 to the dozen without a
puff or wheeze and only looks about 60. He's been a Communist all his
life and became a gardener because he kept getting sacked from
factories etc but figured out that the gentry needed gardeners. A
truly fascinating man and an inspirationt oa ging gardeners. He has a
garden of over 10 acres plus does this show weekly..