You're Never too Young to learn to work Hard

When I was 13 years old my mom would make me clock, that right, clock, with a timecard, eight hours of outside yard work each week. And in all honesty, I hated her for it. I had to rake an endless supply of oak leaves from 16 enormous oak trees, pick berries from about 500 strawberry plants that didn't only contain berries, but also huge grasshoppers and spiders! I also had to water all those berry plants and about 10 trees. I had to dig holes in the ground, but not just the regular ground, the ground that served as a driveway for about 30 years before I started digging in it. Needless to say, I hated yard work.

Fast forward 24 years.... 

My life is full of hard work, and I appreciate the outside work I do. I'm not afraid to get dirty or get things done when things get hard, and it's my duty as a mother to teach that to my children that as well. 

My chickens needed new bedding and it needed to be replaced before the next snowy day. My husband's truck was unavailable, so I made do. That's right. I asked the gal at the feed store to cut the three strings off the bale so I could shove as much hay I could into my trunk. The teenage girl with 90's style chunky highlights looked at me like I was nuts, but she did cut the strings, and I filled my trunk full of straw. When I ran out of room there, I put four flakes under my kids' feet in my cab of my car. 

If you are wondering if it made a HUGE mess the answer is yes, it absolutely made probably the biggest mess I've ever had in my car. Thankfully I was able to pay my oldest to vacuum it all out and it looks better now than it did before! 

My littlest guy was super excited that we brought home hay and without me asking, he threw on his mismatched gloves and started cleaning all the old bedding out of the chicken boxes. After he got it all into the wheelbarrow (we save our chicken bedding for biochar) he walked back and forth from my car carrying flakes of hay that were nearly as big as him back to the chicken coop. While he does not like to do inside work, he seems to really enjoy that hard outdoor work that I hated as a kid and that makes this mama's heart happy.  

This is my middle guy who has never enjoyed working in general, but lately he's really stepped up and decided that instead of getting a shopping cart for the chicken food, he would rather carry it on his back. It's comical to me, but to him he's helping out and putting in a huge effort to get our chickens their food.