Shovels and such

My shovel today was very inferior. I looked all over for a visual reference and this was the best I could find. Our Truper shovels are apparently not for sale online.
The shovel on the far right is what we generally use: sturdy, square, long handle. We also sharpen them with a belt grinder, or at least a bastard file (I love that term). The second shovel on the left is a "sharpshooter", which is good for digging postholes. That's what I was using today, thinking I could dig a bit smaller hole in the loose sandy stuff we would find today near the Red River. Of course, the shovel had not been sharpened, and the soil was baked like a brick. Imagine trying to cut stale bread with the back side of a butter knife. It also turned out, somehow, that the short shovel was heavier than the long shovel.
The moral of the story: sharpen your shovels before you dig!