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Mud Digger

and wind up the chain to the fork. The fork and all iron work was black- smith made but the block and chain.

These pin diggers had a row of pins on the lower side of the fork handle and a frame with an iron bar across at the platform was used to hold the fork into the hard oyster shell mud. If the handle was pinned down to much and it would be to heavy for the horse, this was called dogging to heavy, the horse would stop and the handle eased several pins; a rash horse or a poor driver could throw the man on the handle up against the frame and block or dump him into the hole.

Bruce Bell was thrown into the hole one day and while down at the bottom he had a look around and came up reporting there was an “old mud cut ahead and uncle Jim’s chopper that was lost last winter was stand— ing up in the corner.” Bruce got on horse back with blankets wrapped around him and galloped off home for dry clothes. Strange to say a person never got a cold from a ducking in salt water but it was chilly at the time. An eel spear brought up the chopper and they ran into the mud out next day.

The farmers used ten loads per acre and more if the shells were scarce, this meant a lot of mud for they came for ten miles away, the small beds were soon cleared up, longer handles were used and the beds were gone over a second time. Some way had to be found to use the big bed, this never froze over and covered ten to fifteen acres; at low tide parts of this bed would be two to three feet above water; there must have been heat from the mud and the high spots broke up any ice that did form

at high tide. 19