I've done my share of digging too, but nothing like that hole. But it has been hard ... at my former place in Tromsø there was quite a little soil, really a lot of rocks and roots from the trees. It was completely unthinkable to have heavy machinery coming in, destroying my trees and my garden. I had a parking place outside my property. It was such a nice place ... all until they decided to build 500 houses on the neighbour property, but I digress.

We had to destroy the floor in our basement due to a sewage problem, got help from some handyman with that project. The handyman wanted to make an apartment there as well, so I threw more money after him . I was concerned about the humidity there, but the guy insisted it was OK and claimed the drainage was perfect. It wasn't. When complaining, he told me how much he wanted for fixing the drainage around the house. My Polish friend/tenant said "I can dig that by hand for half the price". Even that was a bit too much, so I did maybe half of the digging myself. Mostly clay, but also grass and rocks.

There are multiple reasons for doing things by hand rather than by machines:

• Think of the environment. Heavy machinery produces noise and emissions
• Think of the neighbors, they are less likely to complain when you're doing things by hand.
• Think of the environment. Heavy machinery can easily destroy your garden!
• Precision work is best done by hand. Heavy machinery is much more likely to destroy things and make a mess.

I was working from Beijing for a while, and it was clear to me that some areas there were "posh", others were "poor". Our office was in a "poor" area, while the hotel was in a "posh" area, and most of the time I walked to the office. They were doing some digging work nearby the office, it involved an excavator, lots of noise and mud, and it took months before they finished the work. They also did some digging work closer to the hotel, and it included digging across a bigger street. No machinery involved, just people with spades. While digging over the road, they were digging under iron plates while the traffic would pass over - I'm not sure they closed the street for car traffic for a minute even. I can imagine it must be really unpleasant to work under such conditions, but ... it's possible. It wouldn't be possible with an excavator.