the day I felt like Pioneer Woman

You all know that I love and avidly read Pioneer Woman. It is one of, if not the, best blogs on the internet in my opinion. Ree is fantastic and hilarious and so generous.

Now, I enjoy her stories of cows and horses and ranch life, but it is VERY far from anything that I encounter in a day. My days are filled with sailboats and tides and sandy beaches. Not quite the same. And I'm not complaining either cause I do love the water. Love, love, love with all my heart.

Well, yesterday our little camp crew had a big project to work on. We needed firewood. You see, when we have rental groups use our property, one of their options for activities is a campfire. A camp fire on our waterfront no less. Not that you can really see the water in the dark, but people seem to think it's amazing just to be NEAR the water and have a fire at the same time.
We have many, many campfires. Sometimes 2 or 3 in a weekend. Lots of campfires = lots of wood. Over the last year or two, we have seriously dwindled our supply. It was time to do some replenishing. Guess who was called upon to do so? Are you guessing? Are you guessing Cottage Girl? Well, you are correct.
Note: when you work in a ministry that only has about 8 people on full time staff, your job title is merely a nice suggestion of the things that you will do in a given day. This means that while my job title suggests that I will answer phones and get the mail and do other officey type things....suggestion is all that it is. My job will entail many different things on any given day. For example...in the last 2 weeks I: painted trim in our Dorms, helped measure our boats for their winter shrinkwrap, went to the dump, belayed on the climbing wall (kinda like this), etc and so on. Like my Facebook profile says, "job titles mean nothing here."

So, when it was discovered that we need more firewood, it was basically an "all call" for everyone to get on their gruby clothes and buck up and haul some wood.

On this particular day, yesterday to more precise, we all jumped into vehicles, one of them being the camp truck, which only has 3 gears and none of them are in the proper spot on the little dial (ie...to go in reverse, you put it in 1st gear.) and headed out to one of our co-worker's parent's farm. They graciously allowed up to use some of their downed trees FREE of charge. How nice is that?!
We pull up and begin heading to the downed trees and suddenly, I feel like Ree on her ranch. We are surrounded by cows. Mooing, moaning, staring cows. I could see why she takes photos of them. Their faces are cute in a cow sort of way.
The morning was a busy one. We carried tree parts (large and small), tried to avoid cow manure (I can see why Ree has laundry covered in manure now. Yucko.), chainsawed(is that a word? No, not ME using the chainsaw to be exact), split a bunch-make that a HUGE pile-of logs (yes, I did do this. Are you impressed?) and made nice neat stack of freshly chopped wood (this made my OCD heart very happy). It was a lovely (read: hard work) morning.
Over and over, I kept imagining what it must have been like for people in the olden days that used to do all of those things by hand. No chainsaws, log splitters or trucks. It would have taken them about 2 WEEKS to finish what we did in 2 hours. I'm happy to live in this day and age. I love power tools.

There you have it. An adventure (read: cow poop) filled day in the warm October sun, camp style. Now, how many of you wish you had my job? Yes, yes, I see those hands. I wish you were here too.