The keyboards numpad can be used to move through menus, 8 is up, 2 is down and so on. In gathering you can click on the option you want to farm (e.g. mining copper ore, you select copper ore on the first node) then for each point after, get close get close to the node, press 0/ins on the numpad to select the node, again to open the menu and a 3rd (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th depending on the node) press to mine the item

I can't say why ctrl+clicking bought the hand up for you as on mine it's up all the time when gathering as I use the above method to get through it faster.

Nuker...