Any advice on digging a hole to bury a telephone pole? I’m trying to minimize the disruption to the soil and not dig a four foot trench. I could dig it with a long handled shovel, but with rocky, New England soil, that would be painful.
I have set railroad ties and 6x6's, 4 feet deep many times. I don't think it is practical to do it in rocky soil without digging a short trench. Dig the trench so that when you set then pole the leaning forces are directed against the sides of said trench.
No way to do it with a backhoe without disrupting more soil than is needed for the task. Might look into renting a auger?
I have set maybe 20 or so power poles and steel columns. Those holes were best when dug with good old post hole diggers or an appropriate auger. Using a backhoe creates a whole lot of extra hole. That gets real expensive when setting with concrete.
I worked for a company that did excavation for the power company, only. Don't overthink it. They just used a 4 ton mini ex and would dig a trench of sorts, about 7 feet deep and 4 feet long. That was only done if the power company couldn't auger it with their truck, meaning the preferred method was an auger. And if we couldn't get any kind of machine in there such as a backyard, they would send 3 of us out there with super long shovels and we would dig a 7' deep hole in about 3 hours with 3 guys in 110 degree weather in caliche and rocky soil here in Arizona. Having too big of a pole hole isn't a big deal, we just backfilled using an air powered tamper.
Dug and set the power pole for our electrical service at our yard with a 420D with a 24" bucket. The pole is around 20' tall and buried it 4-5' in the ground and backfilled with well-graded aggregate that we tamped in with pry bar ends.
Dug plenty of holes for power poles when it was to rocky for an auger with a backhoe. Plant them 6' or so and never tamped any other than a bit with the hoe once the hole was full you'd be darn hard pressed to push them over.