I get a kick out of the ads for yard equipment. They often show middle-age or even senior women easily pushing a weed cutter or such on a former plowed field. The reality for many is Toimi sand.
What is Toimi sand? Northern Minnesota was plowed up by glaciers which moved a lot of stuff around and broke it up. Some places this is ridges, some places it is gravel pits, some places it is great outcropping of rocks. In the Brimson-Toimi area in the Superior National Forest, it is sand in grains from fist-size to the size of a riding mower.
Some may be flush with the surface and no bother. Some may stick up so far that one must walk around them. Some may stick out just enough to trip the unwary walker. Some may be like an iceberg with seven-eighths of their mass below ground level.
Whatever the amount Toimi sand sticks up out of the ground, it makes running any wheeled equipment very difficult. Wheelbarrow, cart, trimmer, mower, or snowblower. These last two are more vulnerable; a rock could chip a blade or snap a shear pin.
To make work easier one has to work a lot. Today we tackled a rock that was sticking only about three inches out of the ground. I had to run a lawnmower around it one too many times.
I got out our big pry bar to have a go at this troublesome rock. I was able to jam the pry bar down along side the rock about nine inches and jiggle the rock. Going around the rock to several spots and using another rock or a log as a fulcrum, I was able to lift the rock a couple of inches but I just couldn't get it out, and the rock would fall back down.
I found some smaller rocks and dropped them along side the big rock. I was able to get the big rock up about an inch. I called my wife to help. I'd lever the rock up and my wife would drop a smaller rock down along side it and sometimes she could push it under the big rock. Up more and more. With me pushing the pry bar and bending it, my wife, of all people, pulled the rock up and out with her bare hands. The darn thing was the size of three footballs.
I took a ten-pound hammer to the rock. Arrowheads and flint knives flying all over the place. Wham! A big piece cracked off. More little pieces flying. Wham! An eighth of the rock cracked off. More little pieces flying. Wham! A bigger piece cracked off. Now over a third of the rock had split off. I tried hitting what looked like a fracture. No go! Again and again. Still no go. It is now lunch time. That's enough.
I tried lifting the bigger piece with the idea of carting the pieces off to dump in a hole. I couldn't do it. So, the rocks will sit there to another day. Or year, like two other big rocks in our cabin yard that I've gotten a bit out of the ground and then no further. And they too seem to be immune to cracking more than a chip at a time.
And poor Jean Valjean had to bust rocks all day with few, if any, breaks. It gives new meaning to being sentenced to years of hard labor.
