The Harvesting History Heirloom Compost Scoop

The Compost Scoop belongs to the family of shovels. It is a kind of hand shovel, but like all scoops it is not designed to handle heavy digging. The growth of civilization paralleled the evolution of both the shovel and the spade. The Chinese had a bronze spade – closely resembling the modern spade in shape – as early as 1100 B.C. However, it was the Romans who set the pattern for every spade and shovel that we use today.

The Romans were the first people of Western culture to study and defend the soil. They were also the first to insist upon attaching a garden to each private house. The great Roman garden writers – Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella – defined husbandry as an art.

When Rome fell, the technology of the forge – the critical technology for heating iron to its malleable point – went into a decline. As a result the secrets of saw and shovel making were lost for nearly 500 years. During this time, inherited tools became as precious as jewels.

As the cities of Europe rose, the garden came to symbolize the intimacy with and the right relationship to Nature. Garden tools kept their design but improved in construction. The scoops never competed with their relatives – other shovels. Instead their purpose became specifically to move soil, seed, grain, etc around or from place to place.

When the industrial revolution brought high-temperature processes by which steel and other alloys could be created, tools began to be made much finer, lighter and more durable than any yet seen.

The Harvesting History Compost Scoop is a fine example of the technology developed in the 1700s and 1800s.