Land Hoe! Reflections on the subject of returning dignity to hoes and men.

As I chop away with my hoe, I stare into the earth and the rhythm gives way to healing, I turn toward the land for meaning, the hoe meets the earth, I swing and chop and pull, and I halt the corruption in my soul, the words give way to sweat, the sweat mixes with the soil, the soil mixes with my soul, I cultivate my own healing, the hoe is my implement, I am a man with a hoe, a tool for healing the soil and the soul.

Photo - Man with hoes

I Love Hoes. There, I said it.

A lifelong career involving horticulture in various forms has resulted in a love of hoes and other implements used to cultivate the earth. Along the way, working with Cuban Refugees, I was bestowed with the title of "human tractor," an acknowledgment of my cultivation skills. Some readers might already be snickering beneath their breath and wondering why on earth a man would express his “love of hoes” in a world where the use and true meaning of the word “hoe” has been sadly lost to many boys and men. The meaning is lost along with the sense of dignity and love for that which is most sacred on earth: our women, our soil, and the basic tools for cultivating our sustenance and dignity.

As boys and men, the language we use to express our sensual ideations has degraded in the mass-media, streets, playfields, and locker rooms to terms that achieve the opposite goal of endearing the subjects of our love interests. With sadness, I observe that too many boys and men today have a stronger emotional connection with the word “ho” than “hoe.”

Photo - Adze Hoe

The degradation of terms of endearment has permeated many levels of modern society. I state this authoritatively as a half-century old man and also as a life-long leader in a wide and wild field of cutting edge horticulture known by exotic titles as garden-based learning, , and urban agriculture. Practitioners in these areas of endeavor use intensive horticulture and agriculture as modalities for teaching, learning, healing, and producing food and plants with a wide range of useful properties.

Creative uses of horticulture and agriculture can be used to teach life sciences and other subjects that are catalyzed and leveraged by getting children out of the box (indoor classrooms) and engaging them in their school and community environments in ways that accelerate and stimulate the learning process. Likewise, horticulture can be used to get patients and other people out of sterile and life-less health care settings in order to make significant improvements on physical and mental health. We make gardens in order to learn and heal in them, as we have done for thousands of years.

Photo - Ancient Men with Hoes

All this sounds good, but one challenge you might face, walking into nearly any classroom in America, is how to begin with the basics. Ask any farmer or gardener, the use of a hoe is an essential skill. Sadly, when I stand with a hoe in my hand and announce that I am going to give a lesson on the importance and history of hoes – the most important tool on earth - I find that I must spend an inordinate amount of time suppressing the giggles and laughter that will tend to override any sense of curiosity about real hoes, and how important these implements are to the both the evolution and survival of humanity. I have had the same experience with children as well as adults. One realizes through numerous such experiences that you cannot get to the exciting subject of hoes until you first address the degradation of the vernacular (of the hoe) in popular culture.

The loss in human dignity is sadly apparent in the current status quo wherein one cannot discuss the value and history of one the world’s most important tools for producing food and sustenance without being laughed out of the room. So, I write this essay to gather thoughts (mine and hopefully yours) to prepare ourselves for the challenge. I intend to reclaim, even rejoice, my love of hoes along with male dignity with this essay. You might laugh and giggle too, but kindly observe the dis-ease in your body with this laughter, and kindly consider joining with me in reclaiming a word and a tool that is, and forever shall be, essential to human life: the hoe.

Photo - Distracted Men with Hoes

He for She

Emma Watson delivered a brilliant speech at the United Nations on September 20, 2014. Her speech gave light to a new movement whose intention is to reinvigorate the importance of being a feminist, and for men to stand up and declare their intentions with regard to gender equality.

“Today we are launching a campaign called ‘HeForShe.’ I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We want to end gender inequality—and to do that we need everyone to be involved. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for gender equality. And we don’t just want to talk about it, but make sure it is tangible.”

One possible outcome of this article is to make the HeForShe campaign a little more tangible. I hereby throw my hat (and hoe) in the ring of support for this movement. I was raised by a single working mother, and became a feminist at a young age, thanks to attending feminist organizing meetings along with my mother. However, as Emma Watson points out in her U.N. speech, feminism hasn't exactly been in vogue lately. She challenges us to reclaim and reinvigorate our feminism. I accept the challenge.

Photo - Victory Garden Poster

The Hoe as a Symbol

Perhaps you have heard of the notion that women invented agriculture? The idea is an intriguing one, but since the invention of agriculture (and hoes) occurred before recorded history, we may never know which gender to credit for these great discoveries—more importantly, what does it matter? In many ways the hoe can be viewed as a symbol of the mystery of the union of opposites (Carl Jung wrote of this dynamic in Mysterium Coniunctionis). Isn’t it likely that both men and women have contributed to the development of agriculture, including implements such as the hoe, over the centuries?

The fact that the hoe is now a symbol of division between classes, races, and genders, and has become confused with another similar sounding word, “whore,” is something worth looking at. Is it possible that we can convert or return the hoe to being a unifying symbol of equality, a tool for cultivating a better world where he is for she, where horticulture and agriculture matter, not just for cultivating vegetables and herbs, but also human evolution?

Photo - Western Hoe

Western Hoe Gets Hyped, Hipped and Hopped

In some misguided areas of popular culture, the term “whore” has been abbreviated in the crudest manner to the term “ho”. The expression has become a part of pop-culture and media, and rears its ugly head across all color and class lines. The word “ho” seems ridiculous from a linguistic point of view since the word “whore” was already a one syllable word. On the surface, this not only reflects the ugliness and ignorance of the speaker, but also the laziness.

Ironically, the term “ho” existed long before in the English language: the word “ho” pronounced “hō” served linguistically as an interjection or exclamation, emerging in the etymology of Middle English in the 15th century as a term used to attract attention to something. A classic example, iterated in old black and white movies, is inspired by literature such as the 1620 documentary work of “Land Ho!: A Seaman's Story of the Mayflower, Her Construction, Her Navigation, and Her First Landfall” by W. Sears Nickerson and Delores Bird Carpenter.

Even deeper and more ancient than the nautical reference is the origin of the word in either Old Norse language hó or in Old French language wherein ho is understood to mean “halt”. Meanings such as these are generally lost in the present day use, a mostly American corruption of the word whore, a slang pejorative referring to a sexually loose woman or prostitute. In modern urban use, the term is used as a vulgar noun and flung about in the streets and music culture as a highly offensive term referencing females with not so subtle connotations of loose or immoral sexuality...reflecting wishful thinking by under-developed males who follow age old tactics of male domination and denigration of women.

I ask us to turn toward land for meaning, to halt the corruption and hijacking of the word “hoe,” a useful and important term for our culture and self-cultivation, and to reclaim, rejuvenate, and to ground our sense of meaning with regard to the word to the tool it represents. In contrast to the contemporary vulgarization of “Ho”, the term “hoe” has entirely different and far more interesting etymological origins.

Hoe 101

The Old English noun was recorded as early as 1363, referring to a "hoe, mattock, or pick-axe" and is related to the Old English “heawan” (to cut, as in to hew). The earliest known use of the verb was recorded in 1430. The term has morphed and taken many turns in the language from the reference to a “Hoe-cake” in 1745 American English, referring to a pastry that was reportedly baked on the broad thin blade of a cotton-field hoe, to the Hoedown, an expression for a "noisy dance," that was first recorded 1841, perhaps inspired by a group of dance motions commonly found in mundane farm chores.

As a verb, “to hoe” can refer to actions such as cultivating the surface of the soil around plants, to cut, dig, scrape, turn, arrange, or clean...as to hoe the earth in a garden; to pile or move soil up around the base of plants (hilling or berming); to create narrow furrows (drills) and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs; or generally digging and moving soil away from roots or tubers (such as harvesting potatoes or carrots); and to remove or chop weeds, roots and crop residues. Colloquialisms such as “To hoe one's row” refers to doing one's fair share of a job and a “tough row to hoe” refers to a task that is difficult to carry out.

One could easily write a much longer essay just on the etymology of these words and contrasting the differences and similarities in their meanings. But in this particular case, I have a tough row to hoe -- I want to keep your attention long enough to explore a topic that on the surface seems to have little relevance to urban or modern life. Chances are you are probably an urbanite - reading this article on Linkedin sort of gives you a way. You are more likely to operate a computer keyboard than a hoe on a daily basis. One might also imagine that farmers and country folk consider this topic a rather mundane one, versus one of urban legend, cultural fractiousness, or gender inequality. Regardless of whether you have dirt under your fingernails or not, or actually own a hoe, I invite you to explore the basic understanding of the hoe as an agricultural implement.

Why on earth should you care about hoes?

Photo - Ancient Hoes

The hoe remains one of the world’s most important tools for producing food and cultivating our landscape. The hoe is a tool that used around the world, evolving from the use of a simple stick and enhanced with a wide variety of bits of metal, (and in earlier human history with bone or stone). Many of you are probably familiar with the common hoe, usually a long handled tool with a flat blade of various shapes, primarily used for weeding and for breaking up the soil.

The earliest hoes were bent or forked sticks. After the use of sticks, the hoe was most likely among the first agricultural implements in recorded history. Flaked-stone implements were used in Mesopotamia in the 5th millennium BC. Archeologists have found evidence of these tools along with flint-bladed sickles and grinding stones and other evidence associated with farming settlements. Hoe blades were made a variety of objects found in nature, including animal horns, bones, and seashells.

Photo - Irish Hack

Over the course of history, in all corners of the planet, we can find variations on the hoe, such as the pick, the adz, and the plow. The two basic parts of the hoe, the stick (handle) and the head (blade) have evolved over time, and progressed from bone/stone/shell to copper, bronze, iron, and steel. Modern hoes, as in ancient times, are dragged or thrust.

Photo - Ancient Hoe

Farmers and gardeners today use a wide variety of hoes that can readily be identified on the internet: American hoe, adze, asadon, bachi gata hoe, burgeon and ball how, grape hoe, eye hoe, circle hoe, hula hoe, collinear hoe, diamond push-pull hoe, gooseneck hoe, half moon hoe, ibis hoe, plow hoe, scuffle-neck hoe, swan neck hoe, trapezoid hoe, warren hoe and the list goes on and on. There is a hoe for every purpose, for chopping, scrapping, cultivating, shaping, aerating, harvesting, and more. There are museums around the world that feature hoes, companies that specialize in hoes, instructional materials on how to hoe, histories of hoes, international hoes, culturally specific hoes, mechanical hoes, even metaphorical poetic hoes. I wouldn't be surprised if many readers of this article had their own personal stories about hoes, and I urge you to share them.

Photo - Malawi Man with Hoe

Jembe Hoe Poem

A hoe as we know it, with its sturdy handle, is a hoe that has no fear of grass.
And those who say this isn’t so don’t belong with us.
The hoe doesn’t fear grass; that’s been its nature for ages.
When it enters the garden, the hoe clears it at once, digging up all the grass – with no light touch.
Put it into the weeding, and you’ll see I’m not guessing.
The hoe doesn’t fear grass; that’s been its nature for ages.
It relishes cutting down the bushes and the toughest reeds.
It has no fear or inhibitions: it chops and slashes the grass and asks no questions.
It’s not pushed around in its tasks, no matter where it goes.
The hoe doesn’t fear grass; that’s been its nature for ages.
And when the hoe doesn’t work, you can be sure someone has erred.
Maybe the problem is malice, or confusion about method.
It’s thrown away in a grassy field, and there’s no one to raise objection.
The hoe doesn’t fear grass; that’s been its nature for ages.

-Mwinyihatibu, 1977

Mwinyihatibu Mohamed, born 1920, a resident of Tanga on the Tanzanian coast, was a Swahili poet who composed traditional free verse poetry that elaborates with metaphors that advise and contrast meanings that encourage an audience to think about simple things such as a spider, a needle, a puddle or a hoe, but also making a point about relations in the human world. He is an appropriate champion for this cause.

In 1899, an American schoolteacher, Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940), who used the penname Edwin Markham, was inspired by an 1863 painting to write a poem. The painting was "L'homme à la houe" by the French artist, Jean-Fran?ois Millet (1814-1875); the poem was "The Man with a Hoe."

Photo - "L'homme à la houe" by the French artist Jean-Fran?ois Millet (1814-1875)

The Man with a Hoe
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

The poem became as famous as the painting. Both of these creative works serve as testimonies to the burdens that humans heap upon the human race or the burdens we place upon ourselves. What I see in the visual and poetic metaphors presented here is the opportunity to see the hoe as something that can hold us up and be a tool for recapturing our dignity, even in the face of the worst insults that we can manage to hurl upon ourselves or our fellow human beings.

Sticks and Stones

There's an old children's saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." This is a fable that needs closer examination. Words can hurt more than sticks and stones…they can break hearts, devastate lives, wound the soul, ruin reputations, destroy relationships, even kill. Words can hurt with blunt, cruel force, start wars, set back evolution, even allow global warming to blaze away unchecked.

Cruel and hateful words such as “ho” are verbal abuse that can cause long lasting emotional damage. When someone hurts us, the memories return to us over and over and can live with us forever. There may be words from your childhood that you still haven’t escaped. Weirdo. Stupid. Fatso. Ugly. Lazy. Crybaby. Dummy. Loser. Moron. Sissy. Chicken. And now “Ho.” These painful words can be hurled when we are young as short and shallow barbs, but as we grow, these hurtful words can hook deeper and deeper into us and grow into phrases, paragraphs, and even narratives that we can internalize and propagate. If we don't find a way to heal from them, they can cause lasting, permanent damage. Of course, many grown-ups use these words. But one must question whether “adults” who choose such words have really matured. These ugly words are can be like cancers in the soul and in the culture.

Several decades ago, after leading efforts to organize the first certified farmers' markets in California in the food deserts of Los Angeles, I began the second phase of food system change work with the Hunger Organizing Team. I developed an urban agriculture program that was about growing food in the inner city. To my good fortune, I became the student of an amazing urban farmer in South Central Los Angeles named Earl Ambeau. He taught me some real farming skills, including how to hoe a row, along with other specialized knowledge that urban farmers need to know in order to survive in the inner-city. Here is photo of me with Earl back in 1980:

Photo - Wolfram Alderson and Earl Ambeau and Crew Member

Earl was in heaven when he was in the garden and he planted that seed in me too. When I'm in the garden, I feel like I'm in heaven.

Earl grew a huge variety of butter beans, collard and mustard greens, melons and squash, and he taught me how to use a hoe, among many more other skills. His wife also made the best bean pie I have ever eaten.

Earl welcomed me into his garden and home in South Central Los Angeles, and he helped shape my emerging gardening soul, as well as my urban farming skills. It is hard to put into words the impact he had on me, but his love for urban farming was so deep that it inspired you – infected you. When he would hold up one of his home grown beans or squash, there was such incredible pride and joy that you felt like you were in the presence of something magic. I can't help but think of Earl whenever I have a hoe in my hand. When you pick up a tool, you don’t usually just fall in love with it. Looking at Earl in the picture…you can see the love he has for tilling the soil. He imbued that love into the meaning I hold for the hoe.

Photo - Earl Ambeau in Urban Agriculture Heaven

I want to reclaim this sense of love and respect and meaning with regard to the hoe. I believe that for men and women alike, we can regain our dignity and bury the erosion of spirit that comes along with linguistic degradations of the word hoe. I see that dignity of the hoe is not merely found in the amazing breadth of functionality that it provides as a tool, nor solely as an ancient historical artifact of noble purpose. Looking a little deeper, we can see the hoe as common sense symbol of being an agent of fertility and creation, of being a producer of food and sustenance, a tireless worker tilling the earth, and respecting the sacred soil.

The hoe serves the "human tractor" who commits to loving the earth and all of its inhabitants who happen to rely on a very thin layer of dirt called topsoil that feeds and sustains all life on the planet.

-Wolfram Alderson

Heigh-hoe, heigh-hoe,
It's off to garden we go.
With a bop in our step
And a rhythmic chop,
Heigh-hoe, heigh-hoe, heigh-hoe!

Soundbites from the World of Hoes

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.
-Jerrold, Douglas William

The cure for this ill is not to sit still, Or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, And dig till you gently perspire.
-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard

Cultural Hoe Romping

Just a couple of brief but fruitful cultural hoe romps here.

References for “hoe” in Swahili drawn from Kamusi Project - Internet Living Swahili Dictionary at https://kamusiproject.org/sw.

hoe { Swahili : -buruga }
be hoed { Swahili : -chimbwa } Swahili Example: italazimu [kisima] kifukiwe na kichimbwe kingine [Ya]
hoe { Swahili : -fukulia } Swahili Example: kila asubuhi alikuwa na tabia ya kufukuliafukulia mimea yake [Moh]
hoe (old and worn) , plural hoes { Swahili : kisagalima, pl visagalima[ derived: saga v lima v ] }
hoe { Swahili : -lima }
hoe up weeds { Swahili : -palia }
hoe { Swahili : -palilia }
hoe , plural hoes { Swahili : jembe, pl majembe } [ Terminology: agriculture ]
noun [ see also: chembe; kijembe; wembe]
hoe { Swahili : -chimba } [ see also: chimbo; chimvu; mchimbaji; mchimbi; uchimbaji; uchimvi]
hoe { Swahili : -piga jembe } [ Terminology: agriculture ] [ see also: -piga]
small hoe (used for weeding) , pl small hoes { Swahili : upamba, pl pamba }

And finally from Mphatso Chapotera, Malawi:

In Africa, especially in Malawi, a hoe is an important tool which is used for cultivation in the field.
A household without one is regarded as poor.
I do not know how I could live without my old trusted hoe. What else can an African use to till the land?
It can produce millions of tons of agricultural produce, thereby reducing hunger and poverty.
A hoe is given to newly wedded couples in Malawi as a symbol to show the man that the life of the family depends on that hoe.
Today, I am healthy and strong because my family knows that without a hoe we are nothing.
Long live the African hoe.

References and Links
Lakshmi Chaudhry: Men Growing Up To Be Boys: https://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2526/
Emma Watson Speaks at the United Nations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Dg226G2Z8