by Pettus Read

Aah!! Spring has arrived with the beauty of its flowers and the sounds of garden tillers in the distance. Every backyard, open space and whiskey barrel is being filled, tilled and planted all across the state. Gardeners are releasing all of their built up stress from a winter of reading seed catalogs and watching HGTV as they plant Big Boys, Beefsteaks and other "b" named tomato plants. Each plant is lovingly wrapped in aluminum foil to scare off the cutworms and placed in specially blended soils with the hopes of having the best tomato possible come hot July. I too have had that same desire this year. Along with my fellow gardening friends, I spent the winter seeking just the right place on my property to sink hundreds of dollars into the ground to grow twenty bucks worth of produce over the summer. But, I also use the same reasoning as other green thumb enthusiasts as we write another check for more miracle dirt, it keeps us outside and the soil is therapeutic. That never was in my thoughts as a farm kid having to chop corn and tobacco in the hot sun, but we all change with age. You know, sort of like cheese.

This year I have gone even more in the therapeutic area of enjoyment by ordering one of those little tillers. It is one of those that they advertise on TV and mail you large packages of information with pictures of people tilling luscious vegetables with one hand. They guarantee that it will dig through concrete and if you order all of the attachments you can sell your farm tractor and go into supplying the world grain market. And, of course, I bit. After two deliveries by UPS and three big boxes, I prepared to assemble my last garden tool I would ever need. I could have paid $30 more and they would have assembled it, but not old country conservative me. I have tools and I'm a man. I can do it myself thank you. So, one Saturday morning in my garage I opened the boxes and poured tiller parts out for hours. It is amazing what those folks can pack in a cardboard box! The instructions had plenty of pictures, thank

- Pettus L. Read is editor of the Tennessee Farm Bureau News and Director of Communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation.  He may be contacted by e-mail at pread@tfbf.com

goodness, but the packaging was all vacuumed sealed and encased in bulletproof plastic. Why do they do that? If we could encase our cars in that stuff, no one would ever have another insurance claim. After using the jaws-of-life to open all the packaging, I began to put the tiller together. I did real well with the engine assembly and only got the handles backwards. That required me to disassemble the entire machine twice to get them right, but finally after three band aids due to puncture wounds from using a box cutter to open the plastic hermetically sealed parts and a few bruised knuckles, the tiller looked showroom perfect. It was time to test her out in the dirt. With the pride of a kid with a brand new bike, I gently carried my 20-pound two-cylinder tiller to the backyard. With instructions in hand, I pushed all the buttons and gave the starter cord a yank. The little engine started to purr like a kitten and I pulled my form fitting professional garden gloves on as if I was a racecar driver in the Indianapolis 500. I gave my JD cap a pull down over my eyes and gave the gas.

Since that afternoon I have reversed the blades and I'm tilling somewhat like the advertisement demonstrated. I'm not selling my farm tractor, but I will invest those hundreds of dollars to get twenty bucks of produce as I originally planned. But, next time, I think I will pay the $30 for assembly. That seems more therapeutic than being the whole show for a "tiller rodeo."
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