It’s Enough

I call this one “Earning His Keep”

Rain again this morning. There has been no shortage of rainfall over the past few weeks, though I’m loathe to lament. I’ll take deluge over drought any day of the week, even if we have a house and barn to build over the next few months. Besides, the forced breaks from building are essential to maintaining any semblance of order ’round here. On Sunday we split and stacked what wood we’ll need to get us through the end of October, when we transition to the new land, and then – in my third change of clothes, the other two heaped in watery piles atop the mudroom floor – I dropped a massive, half-rotted sugar maple to block up for next year’s stove wood. This morning, I spent a soggy couple of hours dragging logs I’d felled last winter and running fence. It’s not bad working in the rain. Like most things we tend to consider less than ideal, its desirability (or lack thereof) is relative. Besides, you know how the saying goes: Necessity is the mother of motivation.

I call this one “Michael and Me”

The building is going great. With any luck, we’ll be raising barn rafters by week’s end; if not by then, certainly by next. Sheath the roof, then tin, and voila! Dry storage. Then onto the house. It’d all be much faster if we were using plywood, but the pleasure of working with rough sawn boards is of greater value to us than the expediency of manufactured wood products. To say nothing of the manufacturing process itself, along with the aesthetic toll, along with the fact that utilizing rough sawn means buying from a local mill. Thus far, we have used no concrete, no plastic, and no glues in construction of the barn. I suspect we may use a wee bit of caulk here and there, and maybe a little spray foam round window/door jambs (we do plan to insulate the upstairs for use as winter work space, so some air sealing is called for) hopefully, that’ll be about it as far as baby-seal-clubbing materials.

It is good to be working so much, and by working I mean working, none of this white collar, desk-bound, pontificating bullshit. Up at 5 and outside, and most days staying there until near dark. A dozen, even 14 hours per day, seven days a week, with the exception of obvious breaks like the one I’m taking now. My winter-larded belly has been reduced by two belt holes over just the past month; if I stand at just the right angle, sucking in hard enough that it feels as if something inside me might burst, I can almost see the outline of my abdominal muscles in the mirror. Wait… did I just admit to what I think I admitted to? Forget it. Never happened.

I call this one “Yum”

I will tell you something else, though you probably know it already: The physical work is as good for mind, emotion, and spirit as it is for body. We tend to forget this, I think, in our rush to extricate ourselves from discomfort and danger. We forget the simple pleasure of true fatigue, of something have risen or been raised by our calloused hands. Maybe not everyone cares to know that feeling anymore, or maybe they never did. Maybe they’re after something more, something prouder and more enlightened than this peasant’s labor.

But for me, at least, it’s enough.