Girl's Work

Post authored by Margaret Wilkes, 20 year old daughter of James and Shannon Wilkes and Chief Food Officer, among other duties, at Faith Mountain Farm

I have observed that girls, by their nature and talents, usually carry their duties out in the home and surrounding environs, involving themselves in pursuits that are rightly theirs to do. We enjoy this “women’s work” and find great solace in carrying out the duties given us, the duties such as preparing meals, beautifying the home, teaching children, pursing various handicraft skills, shopping for the home, ordering the days, and creating various things.

Most females are not interested in taking part in “Men’s work,” things such as mowing the lawn, building things, operating power equipment, shooting guns, splitting wood, etc.  However, I happen to believe that it is not only beneficial for ladies to learn skills that are normally performed by men, it is very enjoyable. For one thing, I found it makes you appreciate and empathize with the work your brother or father or husband toils through each week.  Another, it is a wonderful change of pace from our usual sphere of work.

This past week I made good on a promise to do a bit of wood splitting with my brother. Remembering how much I enjoyed splitting wood as a child was one of the motivations for this promise. It proved just as enjoyable as it had been when I was young. We split the logs until our splitter ran out of fuel, then he informed me that now I could pick up what logs I could and place them near the splitter for the next workday. He then left to do some other thing, and I began scouring for logs I could move. I came upon four gigantic ones, each weighing at least 85 pounds apiece. Thinking I couldn’t possibly move those, I walked on until I spotted the sledgehammer and wedge sitting a few yards away. Immediately I was intrigued. Mimicking what I had seen my brothers do, I placed the wedge in a groove in the wood and started by hammering it gently with the sledgehammer to keep it from falling over when I started hammering in earnest.  After several hits from the sledgehammer, the wedge really began sinking into the wood. Soon, across the stillness of the field, I heard a crackling sound that was soft at first, but grew into a loud symphony of crackling. Seeing the end was near and breathless with delight at my success, I kept hammering furiously. Then, with a loud THWACK the log split in half and splattered in the mud nearby. I was hooked.  I did the same to the 3 other logs, the last one taking the longest to split since it was a hardwood log. At one point I was so engrossed in my project I hardly even noticed several cars with drivers ogling me as they rode by. What I sight I must have been! Muddy all over, red faced, wild hair, and wielding a sledgehammer with the determinedness of a madwoman. I did not care in the least, for I was having too much fun! After the logs were all split into a size I could carry, I took them to the splitter one by one. It started to rain as I was carrying the last log, and thus ended my day on the job.

It goes both ways.  Put a man on laundry duty for a day and expect them to stand in awe for the next week of every shirt that miraculously appears, perfectly folded and pressed, in their drawer. Put a girl on wood splitting duty for the day and she will appreciate each piece of wood put into the fire for warmth. Not only that, but you may have to fight for the possession of that wedge and sledgehammer.

Home alone - day 2

This will be short. My hands are very weak and shaky from two days of pounding a mushroom inoculation tool! I estimate I filled 2000 holes in logs with mushroom spores in the past two days. So now you know what we did this afternoon, the final 29 mushroom logs. Here is the rest of the day:

5:45-7:15am: delivered baked goods to Bald Guy
7:15-8am: animal chores and breakfast
8am-noon: assembling racks and supers and putting in foundation (it was 22 degrees with an inch or so of snow on the ground, so we had to delay working outside)
12:30-1:22pm: animal chores
1:22-4:22pm: mushroom logs

papa left (thanks for two great days of work papa! He's such a good father to me.)

The remainder of the day involved wandering around doing animal chores, cleaning eggs, riding the four wheeler and pushing the four wheeler (it wouldn't start after I turned it off about a mile from the house ... luckily it is mostly downhill from where I was so I coasted), planting 15 Christmas trees, hauling wood, and eating pizza. Now I am going to bed. For Shannon: I tried to work on the shower, but no luck yet.

Home Alone

Shannon and the children left this morning to go to the beach for a few days with Ron and Marcia, Reine, Clark and Britney, thus leaving me home alone. I have to go to work Wednesday, but in the interim, I have two days to work on the farm!!! Papa Bob (aka the great actor in several of my videos) came up this morning and is spending the night.

Today was quite busy. After finishing the packing and saying goodbye to the beach bums, I called a local Christmas tree grower and ordered 200 seedlings to replenish our tree patch. He just so happened to be coming this way and agreed to bring the trees with him and meet me at the corner store. As I waited for papa and the trees, I began assembling racks and supers. Papa soon arrived and joined in the assembly. We built 6 or so supers with frames with foundation in a couple of the supers before I went and got the trees. I ended up with 250 from the generous nurseryman. By now it was time for lunch. After lunch we drove across the creek and through the woods to my mushroom tree spot and cut down two more trees. I hoped this would be enough to get us over the 200 log goal. We brought the logs out of the woods and began the innoculation process. We fixed about 20 logs in the next two hours and then counted. We were at 168 logs and there were 29 left on the truck. Do the math ... three short. I'll have to cut one more tree.

Throughout this day, other farm chores were performed: gathering eggs (27 today!), feeding and watering chickens, catching and feeding escaped goats, feeding and watering rabbits and making sure the baby rabbits were alive (they were), and feedinng cats and dog. Oh yeah, it was darn cold today too and we ran out of wood at the house, so we had to take a load to the house from the barn.

As the day drew to a close, I decided we would plant a few Christmas trees as a test to see how long it would take us to plant all of them. The first tree was in the ground when a few flakes of snow started to fall (did I say it was cold?? it had been snow showering off and on all day). We continued without much thought and before we knew it, everything was getting white, our holes and seedlings were getting covered up as fast as Papa dug the holes. I was timing the planting of ten trees so I could multiply by 20 to get the time for 200 trees. It took us 17 minutes to do 10 trees. The snow fell so hard that in 17 minutes everything was white. At least half inch had fallen. We went inside to stoke the fire, scramble some eggs, fry some bacon and toast some homemade bread. The snow fell for another 17 minutes or so. We had more than an inch of accumulation, but now it was clearing off.

After supper and the evening animal chores and cleaning 27 eggs, I had to wrap 2 dozen muffins and a dozen cinnamon rolls to take to the Bald Guy at 6:30 in the morning. Which means it is time for bed! I'll give you another post tomorrow evening summarizing tomorrow's exciting events ... as if anyone out there is really reading this. Of course, Shannon will have to read it.