What weapon, this?
In tool section A
I’d not known to miss
Your smoothly slicing foray
Through the barely-there weeds
Conspiring today for the weeks coming hence

O! Not so! — those ignoble plants!
Your ring sharp, with ease
Hardly turning the soil, so graceful your dance
And happ’ly no more is that threat’nd advance

So simple so sweet!
Scuffle hoe mine
Not once did I meet
a tool so humbly divine.

Without your wise counsel
I must surely admit
Too many hours spent bent o’er rows
Pick-pulling up an almighty ounce
Was trying my patience and wanting to quit
This project of feeding a few hungry maws.

So thank you, yes, thank you
My dear scuffly friend.
But –
I’ve hustled and huffled past my wits’ bend…
And now I am thinking about transitioning to a no-till, dense planting strategy with intensive cover cropping and mulch application. So I’m not really sure how much I’ll use you anymore. But thanks for all the help, you really saved my back from a lot of strain.

Original version written by Cambria Whitcomb for the Greenhorns blog.