Hand-kneading 50 loaves of sourdough"? That's brutal. I can barely handle a couple batches by hand before my wrists give out. Sourdough is already such a tough dough to work with when it's fully hydrated. I bet your shoulders were screaming by the end of the day. Did you at least get the loaves to the market on time, or did that mess up your whole schedule?

Well, I'm not sure it's that serious. If the neighbor was polite about it, fine, but a gas blower running for an hour isn't going to ruin anyone's air permanently. I've used both and honestly I'd rather deal with the gas smell than trip over a cord every five minutes. Plus, electric blowers just don't have the same power for wet leaves or heavy debris.

My buddy Mike tried the stick fix in Shenandoah a few years back and it went about half as well. He snapped a pole at 3am in a drizzle near the Hawksbill Gap parking area and found a dead branch that looked perfect, but didn't notice it was rotten until he shoved it in there and it crumbled like wet cardboard. He ended up lashing the broken ends together with a shoelace and wrapping the whole thing in duct tape, which gave the tent this weird hump shape that collected water all night. He told me he woke up with a puddle in his lap and a bent pole that never fully straightened out again.